Times Like These
by Spazzynerd
Summary: Everything's calm. That is, until Angel goes missing. But when they find her shortly after with another...birdkid, things start picking up again. Will the Flock accept the new member, or kick her to the curb?
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Hey, it's me...the author. With the first FF story in ages. I've been wanting to do a Maximum Ride story for a while now, and I got the idea of creating a new Flock member. Which, as a concept has never been used before. *sarcasm* Buuut, if you don't like it, you don't like it...just don't vocalize it to me, because you've been warned right now of an OC! **

**Oh, the horror. **

**Anyway, with each set of 4 dashes, the POV changes from Daveigh to Max...**

**And, I'll post another chapter tomorrow. Yay, Spring Break and no social life. :D**

**So, yes, enjoy!**

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It was times like these, were I was coasting on a jet stream, with the cool breeze whistling in my ears that I felt my calmest. It was these times that I could almost forget that I had a psychotic team of scientists trying to get me to save the world, countless would-be assassins, a voice and my head, and oh yeah, don't forget the 2% Avian DNA. Almost. But, with me and the flock, almost was as good as it got. I angled my primary feathers downwards so that I lost just enough altitude to be flying next to Fang.

"Yo." I greeted. Another example of my igreat/i feminine social skills. I watched as the right side of his mouth quirked upwards, and felt my insides flip flop.

"Yo," He replied. Fang was another reason these calm moments were made even better. That's right, this adolescent bird-boy that looked like he could become a sociopathic mass murderer was my...well, boyfriend. The word sounded foreign, even in my thoughts, but it also felt oh so right. We were both still getting used to the whole "togetherness" thing, but it was something that I was most definitely enjoying. We had absolute trust in one another, and he just had a wierd way of calming me, like no one else can, including myself.

"I was thinking that we should stop for food sometime soon. Got any ideas?" I asked, as I lazily rolled over in the air onto my back.

"We're flying over middle of nowhere Canada." He stated, by means of an explanation for "there's not many options for a gourmet meal." I grinned and shrugged.

"You know what I mean. Maybe we could hit up Toronto and see the restraunts there. It should only take us about an hour and a half to get there." He nodded once in affirmation.

We flew in a comfortable silence for a while, listening to Gazzy and Iggy discussing their latest explosive ideas. And I mean iliterally/i explosive. As in, "How much Clorox and elctrical wire would we need to blow up an army of (insert antagonistic creature here)?" kind of ideas. But, I was enjoying this laid-back moment too much to question their pyromaniac issues. I sighed contentedly before rolling back onto my stomach. I felt Fang grab my left hand from beneath me, and my heart skipped a beat. But in a good way. I smiled to myself, and gave his hand a light squeeze. It was moments like these that I could seriously get used to.

"Where'd Angel go?" Nudge asked suddenly.

The bottom of my stomach lurched and just like that, with those 3 little words, my sense of calm was ruined. It was times like ithese/i that I remembered within our flock was a cute and adorable 7 year old, who also happened to be able to read minds, control other peoples thoughts, breathe underwater, and talk to creatures of the deep. In other words, a complete oxymoron to her saintly name. I instantly dropped Fang's hand and angled my left wing downwards to make a tight arc so that I was facing the rest of the flock. I did a quick head count, and as Nudge had stated, we were indeed one Angel short. I resisted the urge to let loose a few innapropriate words, and instead took in a deep breath.

"Okay, when was the last time you saw her?" I asked in forced calm, mentally slapping myself for being so absorbed in my calm moment with Fang that I hadn't noticed Angel's departure.

"I don't know, maybe about 10 minutes ago. She and Total were talking and they fell back. I dunno, I thought they wanted privacy or something." Nudge explained in a rush, her large brown eyes wide. I frowned before yelling, "Okay, everyone! Ground sweep of the area, ASAP!" And with that, we all dive-bombed towards the ground in search of our favorite mind-reading seven year old.

----

I closed my eyes, concentrating hard on what I was about to do, before opening them and taking off in a sprint. I felt my arms pumping with me, granting me more momentum. When I was finally going at my top speed, I snapped out my wings. I hissed in pain at the action and felt myself gain a maybe 10 feet in altitude before dropping to the ground like a brick. I hit the ground face first, with my body and wings following shortly after. I lay there for a long while, sucking in lungfuls of air and clenching my eyelids shut at the excruciating pain that was radiating through my left wing.

"Goddamnit." I thought bitterly. "Stupid wings." I opened my eyes, and pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, ignoring the fact I was now covered in mud. I leaned back on my on my calf muscles and debated inwardly if I should try to retract my wings or just leave them out, knowing that the former would result in even more pain. But, then again, if I left them out, someone could notice me, and I would automatically be on the run for the rest of my life. I felt my face sour at the thought, but I dismissed it quickly, deciding once again to attempt flight. I tightened the muscles in my legs, and used them to jump to my feet and proceeded to back up to the edge of the clearing. I then swallowed deeply and took off yet again in another sprint. However, since I hadn't felt like retracting my wings, they caught the air mid-run, and I as knocked backwards to the ground, my wings taking the the hardest hit against a small log. I slumped back against it, biting my lip to keep back a scream of pain and frustration, not to mention tears, which were threatening to pour out of my eyes uncontrollably. I was to a point where I couldn't even move my wing to evaluate the damage, and it was past the irritating stage, it had entered the time to panic stage.

I pounded my fist against the moist earth in a burst of anger and as means of a distraction from the pain. I glanced down at the indent my hand had made, and then saw how pale my hand was. Which was a fairly good indication that I was bleeding...a lot. I didn't dare remove my teeth from my lip to say the line of curse words coursing through my mind, knowing that if I did, a very loud, unpleasant scream would be the result. I finally just closed my eyes and tried to force myself to remain calm and think of some way I could get out of this forest.

"Are you okay?" I suddenly heard a soft voice ask. I jumped regardless of how soft the voice might have been, and my eyes snapped open. A blonde little girl who looked to be about 7 stood in front of me, blue eyes wide.

"Nope." I said bluntly, surprised I hadn't yelped instead.

"Do you want help?"

"Nope." I repeated, very slowly easing myself to my feet.

"But I heard your thoughts and your wing looks really bad..." If I had been more coherent, I would have stopped and asked how she had heard my thoughts and then realized that I had heard about this girl before and knew exactly who she was, but as it was, I was anything but coherent. So instead, I said nothing and kept on walking.

i"You have nowhere to go. You can't fly away. Please, just stay here for a little bit."/i The kid's voice said. Only, I realized that she had sent her thoughts to my head, rather than vocalized them. That thought seemed to make me slightly more coherent and I found myself turning slowly to face her. She looked a little fuzzy, but I dismissed it and sucked in a big breath.

"Nope." I said yet again, knowing that it wasn't really a proper answer, but hell, that one word seemed to be a good answer to anything at the moment. I kept walking, and the girl was about to say something again, when all of a sudden, I vaguely heard the beating of multiple pairs of wings followed by feet dully impacting with the ground.

"Angel! Oh my god, Angel! Why would you just leave like that-" I turned as I heard an older female voice yell and then cut off, and saw 5 other kids with wings. The wings out made me realize exactly who these people were, and I instantly regretted being in the area. They were all more or less gaping at me, and I took a protective step backwards.

"I heard her thoughts, and I knew she was like us. But she's hurt really bad, Max." Angel explained with a sense of urgency. All 6 of them, plus a dog were all staring at me intently. I dimly noticed how they looked kind of like the Myster Gang, with the dog and everything. But, instead, I squeezed my eyes shut, and felt myself sway ever so slightly before taking in another breath.

"I'm fine." I muttered, taking a couple more steps backwards.

"Who is she?" The light-haired tall one, Iggy, asked.

"I don't know..." Max began, eyeing me suspiciously.

"Max, look at her wing! It's like, seriously busted! You don't have time to glare at her." The dark skinned girl practically shrieked, the shrillness of it hurting my head. Max looked between the flock and me, clearly indecisive.

"Well, I guess you better come with us." She said sounding reluctant.

"No, I'd really rather not. I'm fine, so I'll just be-" I forced myself to block out the pain, if only for a moment, and retract my wings before spinning on my heel and taking off as fast as I could. I don't know how far I got, but suddenly, the trees began swimming in and out of focus before growing darker and darker. And the next thing I knew, my arms had been grabbed from above me before I completely blacked out.

----

Hauling some stranger with wings, scratch that, a busted wing all the way from Ontario to my mother's newest location in Sasketchewan made was not my idea of fun. While normally the trip would have been a nice, short fly for us, it lapsed on forever due to the extra baggage we all had to take turns carrying. She hadn't woken up yet, and I really hadn't expected her to, what with the amount of blood that had been lost. But I was still slightly irritated that I couldn't interrogate her and see if she was a hoax or something.

The Flock was in a state of confusion and excitement over this girl that Angel had found, with said 7 year old hovering over the girl the most. I had done my part in slowing the blood flow as well as carrying her every so often like the good bird-kid I am. But after that, I settled for listening to the rest of them spaz out, all while thinking the same thought to Angel.

iYou are in big trouble, kiddo."/i She got the message loud and clear, I know she did, but she was choosing to ignore me. And to be honest, that stung. Despite how she had repeatedly not listened to me on our latest adventure to Hawaii, it still hurt to know that I was as much of a leader to her as a can of soup.

"I wonder what happened." Gazzy puzzled, not for the first time.

"Whoa, she was really bleeding." Iggy commented nervously as he ran his fingers lightly over her blood-soaked shirt.

"I hope she's okay!" Nudge fretted, glancing over at the girl in Iggy's grasp.

"Hey." I suddenly heard a familiar voice say in my ear. I turned to see Fang flying slightly above me, and as usual, his face gave away nothing.

"Hey," I repeated, aware of how stupid I probably sounded.

"Are you okay?" He asked quietly.

"I'm fine, why?" I replied, not sure what he was getting at. But instead of answering, he just nodded once and pointed downwards where my mother's house was coming into view. Despite my current irritation at the unconcious stranger in our midst, I felt a wave of happiness rush through me as Dr. Martinez's house entered my field of vision. Even though I had seen the same house less than a day ago, after 14 years of not having a mom, every little moment spent with her was a good one.

"Hurry!" Angel shouted to us from her steep descent towards the ground. I followed suit, letting my super speed kick in and I managed to beat her to the ground. I hurried to the door and rang the doorbell twice and knocked for good measure. She answered the door a couple seconds later, and without question, wrapped me in a hug. I melted into the touch as she said, "Max? What are you doing here?"

I stepped back from the embrace and gestured at the rest of the flock who were landing a few feet away from me. "We seem to have an injury." I said stiffly.

She scanned over the Flock, trying to figure out which one of us it was, before she realized the extra cargo between Iggy and the Gasman. "Oh my..." She began before running up to the two and gently taking the stranger into her arms. She gasped at the amount of blood, but wasted no time in bringing her inside. We followed suit, and watched my mom clear off a table in the living room and set the stranger on top of it. Ella, who must have heard the commotion, peered around the corner and her eyes went wide at the site.

"Ella, honey, can you grab me some scissors?" She nodded and quickly retrieved them for her. We then watched as my mother cut the shirt off the girl, revealing her copper colored wings. We all gasped at the site of the left wing, which looked crushed at the tip, and had a large gash across the underside of it. Despite my better judgement, I actually felt a pang of sympathy for this stranger. I knew how much it sucked to have wing injuries, but I'd never had one this bad.

"You guys are going to have to leave. I'm going to have to perform a minor surgery."

"Awww man." Gazzy whined, but after a sharp look from me, he left the room with the others. Geez, all this trouble for some stranger.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Yo. As promised, I have another chapter for you all~**

**Next one will be longer and more...better. I'm not quite satisfied with this one...but, I'm too lazy to go back and fix it. .**

**But, it's Spring Break. I have a right to be lazy? **

**Enjoy!**

**-----**

An insistent pain in my left wing woke me up, and then it all came back to me. My wing had been busted up, I had been spotted by Angel of the Flock, and then the rest of the Flock showed up....But, what had happened after that. I frowned slightly and slowly opened my eyes, only to snap them shut at the bright light that filled the room I was in. Wait...shit. I was in a room...which meant I had definitely been moved from the forest. Craaaap. I opened my eyes once again, and squinted against the light to see a woman who looked to be in her late 30's or early 40's.

"Good, you're finally awake." She said with a warm, genuine smile. I blinked, confused. "You've been out for over a day. I had to operate on your wing, but it's recovering nicely. However, no flying for at least two weeks."

"Wait, what?" I asked, sitting up sharply. She gasped at my sudden movement and was at my side in a flash.

"It's movement's like that that will slow your recovery time." She warned. I took in a deep breath and slowly eased back down into the bed.

"Okay, you've got a point there. Thanks for the surgery and stuff, but can I ask you some questions, because I'm kind of confused."

"Go for it." She replied with another one of those smiles.

"Okay, well, who are you? Where exactly are we? Did the Flock bring me here? And do I have to stay here for my recovery?"

"Dr. Valencia Martinez, Max's mom. In the southern part of Sasketchewan. Yes, and yes. Now, if you don't mind, can I ask you some questions." I wasn't about to say no, even though I really felt like it. There was just something rude about saying no to someone who operated on your win and sheltered you for a day while you were unconcious.

"I suppose."

"What's your name? How did your injury happen? When did it happen? And why were you alone in the middle of the Ontario wilderness?" I was silent for a long while, and I closed my eyes, wishing I could be unconcious again. In fact, I would have welcomed the painless blackness of unconciousness.

"With all due respect, Ms. Martinez, I don't feel comfortable answering your questions." I finally said, figuring she might drop the subject if I used a very polite manner of speech. But what surprised me was that she actually did drop the subject.

"To each her own, I suppose. But, do know if you're going to be staying here for two weeks, I need to at least know your name." She stated calmly, before rising to her feet and strolling out of the room.

Yeah, like I was going to stay here for that long. I sat up slower this time and looked out the window, staring absently at the stars. My attention shifted to the door as I heard it open, and I saw Angel enter the room and close the door quietly behind her.

"Hi." She greeted with a big smile on her face. She was adorable, but I knew better than to leave it at that.

"Hi?" I replied, curious as to why I just couldn't be left alone.

"So, I hear your wings doing better. And your up so that's good." It wasn't a question, so there was no point to answering. "I can't believe someone else has wings too! Did you go to the School? Or was it a different science location?" She asked with an incredible amount of enthusiasm.

"Um...School?" I repeated.

"Yeah, it's like a science lab where they make all kinds of mutants and do horrible experiments."

"Then no, I didn't." I said simply.

"Oh." She paused for a while, clearly trying to figure things out. "Why didn't you want to be by us in the forest?" I was about to ask what she was talking about, but then I remembered how I wished I could have been somewhere far away from that location when the Flock had arrived.

"I don't know, you tell me." I replied, not intending to sound as difficult as it had. But, she was a mind-reader...I didn't see why she wasn't just siphoning off my memories instead of manually prying for them. I expected her to give me a lengthy explanation, but instead she changed the subject.

"What's your name?"

"Do I have to answer that question? I mean, I'm probably just going to be leaving within the next 24 hours anyway." I groaned. At this statement, she looked stunned.

"But...you don't have any friends. Why would you want to leave the closest thing you'll ever have?" Her voice was steady, as though she was trying to guilt me into staying. And while the guilt thing wasn't working, that comment had stung. A lot, actually. I would have said that I had friends, and was the farthest thing from lonely, but then I remembered that she was a mind reader, and there was no point in arguing with what we both knew she knew.

"Because..." I got ready for a lengthy explaination, but I couldn't think of one. All I knew was that I really didn't want to stay, and I was willing to bet good money on the fact that Max didn't want me to either. Couldn't say why exactly, but I just knew if did in fact leave, she wouldn't exactly enter a bout of depression. "Well, it's hard to explain. The point is, I have no interest whatsoever of being in this 'flock'" I did air quotations, and watched her reaction.

"Don't think like that, Max would love another flock member.. She's probably glad to know that there's another person like us."

"Angel, listen to me. Not everyone, especially Max, will be willing to accept another person like you guys. And I am okay with that. I'd be out of place anyway, in fact, I already am. I mean, I'm not even willing to accept the fact I could ever be a flock member. So, why don't we just leave it at the fact that you know you're not alone, and I can go back to keeping to myself?" I exhaled thickly. All in all, I couldn't even believe Angel had accepted it so quickly. It just felt...like things were moving to quickly. And for something that I didn't even want to 'move' to begin with, that was definitely way to fast. I shifted slightly in the bed, and winced at the motion, remembering the pain in my wing. I unfurled it slowly, wincing in pain. But hey, at least I could move it again. I reached out and grabbed the end of it, touching the thick ace bandaging that was wrapped around it.

"Your wings are really pretty." She said simply, as she watched me touch the bandage. I glanced up at her, feeling more than a little awkward.

"Uhhh, thanks." I said slowly, tucking in my wings slowly to avoid a fresh burst of pain. Angel opened her mouth to say something else, but it was at that point the rest of the Flock entered the room. I looked around the room, desperately trying to find something large and heavy to knock me unconcious, but when I found nothing, I frowned and stared at my toes through the sheets absently. Why did they have to find me? I groaned inwardly, earning me a quick glance from Angel.

"Oh my god, you're up!" Nudge shrieked. She was about to run towards me, but I noted how Max placed a hand on her shoulder. She sized me up, trying to gauge something...even if I didn't have a clue as to what that something was. Her expression was less then friendly, and I found myself thinking a smug "I told you so." to Angel. She grimaced before looking back at the others.

"Yeah, you're up." Max said, sounding kind of...bitchy, to be honest. "Now we can figure out just exactly who you are." She crossed her arms at this last statement, and the Flock's attention became even more focused on me. I looked out the window once again, and contemplated the probability of me being able to fling myself out of it and fly with out being caught. Odds weren't going to be in my favor, I figured. I scratched the back of my neck nervously as I tried to figure out what to say. If I gave them my name, and if I did leave afterwards, they'd have enough information to find me later. I wouldn't mind being polite and using common courtesy if it didn't involve forever changing my pleasant "live unnoticed philosophy." Besides, if I idid/i give them my name, it would only invite more questions, and questions meant even more information given. Which, if I figured correctly, the more information they got, the higher the chances I'd have to stick with them. I debated giving them a fake name, but then dismissed it, knowing full-well Angel would be able to detect the lie instantly.

"Well?" Max barked, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"What?" I asked...hoping, but not believing that stalling would help.

"Who are you?"

"A girl with wings." I said honestly, earning me a stifled snort of amusement from Iggy, but a not so pleasant look from Max and Fang. I figured pretty soon she'd start yelling at me, or more probably start punching me, so I decided to speak up before it could happen. "Listen, I appreciate being rescued." Sorta. "And I'm glad you came when you did." I guess. "So, I can't thank you guys enough." Oh yes I could. "But, I really, really just want to get going. That way you guys can go back to not expending energy on some stranger, and I can go back to being, you know...not here. Everyone would win." I smiled, trying to add to the appeal of the deal. But Max was not buying it.

"Trust me, letting you disappear back into the wilderness is something I'm perfectly okay with. But, since we saved your sorry butt from bleeding to death and hauled from Ontario to here, it's only fair that you tell us your name, don't you think?" Although she said it as a mild question, I could hear the venom in her voice. Again, the difficult side of me and the compliant side argued, and guess which one won?

"Yeah, I think so." I agreed, nodding slightly. They all waited, with Max's face darkening with each moment. I found myself wondering when she was going to lose it and kick my ass...or if she would, being that we were in her mothers house. But then I remembered that from what I had read about her, she didn't seem to have a problem with fighting wherever or whenever. So, with that though, I sighed deeply and with a resigned acceptance of changing my quiet life forever, opened my mouth.

"Daveigh." I muttered, returning my gaze to the lump where my toes were.

"What?"

"I said, my names Daveigh. There? Now can you stay true to your promise and 'release' me back into the wild, like the good sportsperson you are?" I was back to being difficult. And hell, if the knew my name and now had access to find me again if they felt like it, iI/i felt like I had a right to be difficult. She shot me a look I couldn't really decipher, before looking at Angel. I was willing to bet good money on the fact Max was asking if I was telling the truth, and Angel probably putting faith in me that I wasn't sure I deserved. I mean, if I was just going to go back to the wild...why would she need to reasure Max that I meant well?

They're staredown continued for a couple minutes, before there was a knock on the door and Dr. Martinez peered around the corner. She took a glance at all of us, unsure of what was going on, before stepping in to the room. She had a big tray of cookies in her hands, and having lived off of deer and moose for the past who knows how long, cookies were a welcome treat.

"Hey, everyone, I brought cookies. I figured you guys might be hungry." I could feel my mouth watering, and I stared at the plate of what looked like chocolate chip cookies intently. The Flock dug in savagely, taking large handfuls. And I was silently thankful that Dr. Martinez had made a massive batch and there was still a handful for me. She strolled over to my side and offered me the tray. I took the handful, and despite trying to eat properly, I more or less devoured them, which made me realize I probably hadn't eaten in about 2 days. I licked my fingers when I was done, and looked up to see everyone watching me yet again, with looks that varied from amused, surprised, irritated, and sympathy. I got the urge to flail like a little kid and whine about having to be amongst them and complain about wanting to go back to my 'home', but I refrained. Instead I said a quiet, but sincere thank you to Dr. Martinez, and she smiled warmly.

"Poor thing, I forgot how hungry you must be. I'll go whip up something for you." She said kindly, before turning to head out of the room. Max followed almost noiselessly, and the rest followed. What an obedient bunch they were to they're all knowing commander. I rolled my eyes as I wondered how they could have standed following her around for their whole lives. I mean, sure, she was a good fighter and knew what it took to survive, but she was just dow unpleasant.

"She's really not that bad." Angel whispered endearingly, apparently deciding to stick around.

"Yeah, you're probably right." I said reluctantly, knowing she was right. I was just the one making her unpleasant. I scanned the room for a clock and saw that it was nearly 10, and I frowned at the thought. My stupid wing had caused way too much trouble. I was aware of Angel watching me, and I supposed since she had found me and ultimately saved me, I did owe her something, despite how much I really just wanted to leave.

"Okay, little girl." I thought, hoping I sounded friendly and not threatening, being that out of the flock, she was the one not mindlessly following Max not to mention making an effort to know me, therefore the one that I liked the most. After being in the wilderness for so long, you start losing you're social skills, and I didn't want to come off as mean to Angel. "You can ask me three questions, and I'll answer you to the best of my ability. And then you can relay them to you're fearless leader, there, since she and the rest of your Flock seem eager to hear my life story." She beamed at me, and I couldn't help but smile back as well, even if it was relatively small in comparison.

"Okay, so if you didn't come from the School, where did you come from?" She sent her question to my head.

"To be honest, I'm not quite sure. I know I've been on my own for the past...7ish years. But before that, everythings fuzzy. So sorry, I can't give you more on that part." She nodded once, and continued on.

"Well, I heard what you were thinking before you told your name...but I'm still not sure on why you don't want to stay here. So why don't you want to stay?"

"The good thing about being alone in remote areas is that you're never hunted. From what I've read about you, you guys get hunted, kidnapped, and nearly killed almost every other day. I really don't have an interest in entering that kind of lifestyle. I'd take being alone and cautious to having companions but hunted constantly any day." Angel's face fell a little bit, realizing that this was a good reason, before asking the last question.

"If you heard about us before, did you purposely stay were you were...just so we wouldn't find you...or you wouldn't find us?" I felt my eyes widen as I realized she hadn't asked what had happened to my wing.

"I stayed there because yes, I didn't want to get involved. Again, I didn't want my life to end up like the chaos your guy's lives are. But, I'm getting the feeling my efforts to keep out of that kind of chaos aren't going to matter much are they?"

"So you'll stay?" She perked up, and I found myself wondering why I was so compelling to her.

"I didn't say that..." I said quickly, panicking that I may have entered a trap. She wilted a little but it was only temporary.

"But you really ishould/i. I mean, it's better than being alone, and you know it too!" She grabbed my hand, and I blinked in surprise.

"Errr...." I said awkwardly. "I really think that you should talk to your-Max." I refrained from saying something like "you're Captain" or "your fearless leader." Last thing I wanted was my nickname to be heard by Max. That would just cause an unnecessary amount of issues. But then again, if I were to leave soon....

"I'll go talk to her!" She said brightly, releasing my hand and more or less skipping out of the room. The door barely closed, when Dr. Martinez entered once again, this time with a big bowl of soup and a large stack of grilled cheese sandwiches.

"Here you go, Daveigh, is it?" She asked as she handed me the tray. I was about to snap upwards, but upon remembering her reaction to the action last time, I forced myself to sit up slowly. She grinned as she saw me do so, and chuckled lightly.

"Thank you!" I told her sincerely, before yanking up the spoon and slurping down gulps of tomato soup rather sloppily. She waited for me to finish eating, which in reality wasn't that long, and took the tray from me.

"Get some sleep, Daveigh. You look like you could use it." She told me gently before exiting. I didn't feel tired, but I didn't want to argue, so with that, I rolled over onto my stomach and was out almost instantly.

----


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: So this chapters completely from Max's POV and pretty short. So, easy reading for ya'll.**

**God, I love Max and Fang...although admittedly I liked it better when they weren't technically official...because it was just more fun that way. But this is pretty good too, if not harder to write about. :D**

**The song Lucky by Jason Mraz has been stuck in my head, and if Max and Fang weren't so harcore, that song would be pretty applicable to them, don't 'ya think? :3**

**Enjoy!**

**----**

This Daveigh stranger was really getting on my nerves. I didn't know her. I didn't like her. And I totally didn't trust her. In Max terminology, I would be fine with just dumping her in the Wilderness like she wanted. Or at the very least, she needed to pull the stick out of her rear end and start giving me some real answers. I paced around the floor for a few more seconds before sitting down on the bed. I mean, being attacked by Erasers, Flyboys, M-bots, you name it, I could handle. But finding out there was another bird-kid in the world, and a really annoying one at that, was something that really caught me off guard.

All of a sudden there was a knock on the door, and I pivoted swiftly and saw Angel enter. I smiled at her, and said, "Hey, sweetie. What's up?" That's right. Despite her scary tendencies, she was my baby.

"Nothing really." She replied, sitting next to me. Her tone suggested that there _was_ something really. I masaged her shoulders lightly and waited with as much patience as I could muster. I got the feeling I knew exactly what the 'nothing' was going to be. "So...can Daveigh stay with us?" She said, cutting right to the chase. I tensed. Yep, my guess had been spot on.

"No." I sad firmly. She frowned slightly, before pressing onwards.

"But why not?" She wasn't whining...but it was pretty darn close.

"Because, we can barely take care of Total, let alone another actual bird-kid. Besides, she doesn't want to stay, so why force her?" I managed to say this all as sweetly as possible.

"Have you even talked to the others about it?" She accused.

"Well no-" I started, but was cut off when she declared she would go get them. Instead of getting up to do so, her expression went blank for a moment and I knew she was mentally summoning them. After a few moments, her expression became more animated and she alerted me that they would be here soon.

"Angel. Listen to me-" I didn't even get to finish, because the rest of the Flock entered the room before I could. Oh the joys of being in a rather small house. It wasn't small enough for me to feel claustrophobic, per se, but it was small enough for a group of 6 bird kids to always be within a 10 second walk from one another. They all were looking moderately inquisitive, save for Fang who remained as stoic as ever. Everyone took a seat around us and I took in a deep breath.

"So'd you talk to the Daveigh girl?" Iggy asked Angel with a curiosity that made me want to smack him. Why was everyone so interested in this girl, anyway? Angel nodded once.

"Yep. She seems really nice, actually." She said conversationally. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and say something like "Seems and is are two very different things."

"Really? What'd she say?" Nudge inquired, leaning closer to Angel.

"She's been on her own in remote areas like that for 7 years, but anything before that she says is fuzzy."

"But we don't know any of that for sure though." I warned slowly. Which was a nicer way for saying I thought that was a bunch of BS.

"I couldn't pick up any sense of a lie. Like I said, she's nice. She felt like she owed me something for finding her, so she let me ask her questions that she said she'd answer honestly." But we didn't owe her anything for hauling her sorry butt over here? This stranger had some pretty messed up ideas of honor.

"You think she's harmless?" Fang asked, voice revealing nothing. It was times like these where I wished he would stop being so unreadable. I stared at him intently, trying to determine if he was taking my side or Angel's. He met my gaze, and any other situation, I would have melted at the look. But since this was most definitely not any other situation, I only waited for the _right_ answer.

"Well, she didn't even know what the School was. So, it's not like she's gonna turn all Eraser on us." Angel replied earnestly, earning her a small laugh from Gazzy and Nudge.

"But, Angel, you don't know anything about her past. The stuff we don't know could come back to bite us in the butt if we only focus on the things that we do know about her." I said with a false patience that, with my great acting skills, seemed pretty darn real. She scowled ever so slightly, which made her angelic face not so angelic. But as quickly as the scowl had appeared, it vanished, and the next thing I knew she was sending her thoughts to my head.

"Angel, No!" I mentally shouted, in a state of disbelief that she was using her thoughts to change my answer. Although, given the whole Celeste issue we had faced what seemed eons ago where she had tried to do the same thing, I shouldn't have been surprised. "If you want her to stay, controlling my thoughts isn't going to help change my answer. If anything, it's going to make it worse and result in some sort of punishment for you, kiddo." I thought hard. Her eyes widened in surprise, before retreating, leaving my mind to myself.

_"Max, how often are you going to come across another person like you and the Flock?"_ My voice said.

Scratch that, Angel retreated and left my mind to myself and my Voice. Great.

"Voice, what an pleasant surprise!" I thought sarcastically. "'Ya think you could ever say something when I really want you to?"

_"Are you protesting so much because you wish to bring her back to the wilderness, or perhaps, is it because you're jealous?" _ The voice continued,as though it hadn't heard my witty remarks. I mentally sputtered at the Voice's statement. That was it.

"Okay fine." I spoke up. "Let her stay if you can convince her." Angel and Nudge let out excited squeals and ran to engulf me in a hug.

"Oh, thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you, Max!" Angel exclaimed, with Nudge making similar exclamations of gratitude. I sat there stiffly through the hug and watched as Gazzy did a fist pump over the Angel and Nudge's shoulders. If I had wanted to smack Iggy earlier, I was now immensely proud of his lack of reaction. In fact, I was proud of him and Fang for being the older more calm ones in this situation. At long last, Angel and Nudge withdrew from the hug, and Angel more or less pranced out of the room.

"I can't wait to tell her!" She sing-songed.

"She's probably sleeping, you'll have to wait 'till tomorrow." Iggy told her, rising to his feet and heading out of the room with her, the Gasman, and Nudge. Which left me and Fang alone. He sat down next to me, and I turned to face him.

"What do you think of her?" I found myself asking, wanting him to be on my side. Wanting to know that he still had my back.

"I don't trust her." He replied simply. With those four words, I found myself relaxing ever so slightly. He must have sensed that I appreciated his answer and used two fingers to lift my chin upwards ever so slightly so that I was looking directly into his dark eyes, and kissed me right on the lips. It may not have been as mind-blowing as our other kisses, but it didn't matter, because this one was gentle and brief but still held an incredible amount of meaning to it. And it left my head spinning, just like the other ones had.

"You changed your mind?" He asked quietly.

"Yeah. Angel probably wouldn't let me forget it if I didn't." I lied, amazed my voice was so steady after the kiss. Either he bought the lie, or he didn't feel like elaborating on it, but he didn't push the issue.

"When do you feel like leaving?" He inquired.

"If she's anything like us, she's not going to want to stay here for two weeks. So, probably in a couple days." He nodded once to this answer. We were silent for a while, each absorbed in our own thoughts before I turned to him and said. "It's getting late, I suppose we should both get some rest." He nodded yet again, before rising to his feet and planting a soft kiss on my forehead. I was glad that it was just me and him in here, because anyone else would have seen my face turn a very bright shade of crimson.

"Goodnight, Max." He said with a slight quirk of his lips.

"Goodnight, Fang." I replied faintly, returning his smile with one that I imagined was probably quite stupid looking. I watched as he left the room and closed the door behind him. Once he was gone, I inhaled deeply, realizing I really had to learn to keep cool when I was around him, or else people would start to think that I was a few fries short of a happy meal. But even as I came to that realization, my smile only widened. I was just too glad that me and Fang were finally piecing things together to care about much else. I'd care about the rest of the world tomorrow, I decided, before flopping back onto the bed with that same stupid grin across my face.

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	4. Chapter 4

**AN: Daveigh's POV.**

**Yep, I was getting pretty bored with the arguing on whether she should join or not, so I just ended it in this chapter. Next one will have more interesting stuff going on. **

**I don't know when I'm going to post the next chapter since school starts again on Monday, and it probably won't be until next weekend. **

**School sucks. .**

**But other than that, enjoy! :3**

**----**

I enjoy sleep. So, needless to say, I don't enjoy getting up. But, when you've got to survive on your own in the wilderness, getting up becomes something that you do anyway if only because you know you have to do. Which is why I get up early, simply because I'm used to hunting in the morning because it's what I ihave/i to do to survive. So, when I got up at the crack of dawn and no one was up, I wasn't too surprised. I yawned slightly before yanking off the covers and swinging my legs over the side of the bed. I rolled my shoulders, loosening my wings a little from against my spine. The left one was incredibly sore, but in comparison to what it had been a couple days ago, I wasn't about to complain.

I stood up and looked out the window longingly. I wanted to go for a fly or at least go hunting for some food like I always did at this time. Old habits die hard, I suppose. I sighed and then debated crawling out the window now, when no one was awake and getting a good 2 hour headstart on land. That way I could find some town and hide out in a building, and with any luck, they'd fly right over me. It was tempting, but I knew that statistically speaking, the chances of it going that smoothly weren't very high. And while I was eager to get back to being by myself, I knew there was a fine line between being eager, and being so eager it's stupid. I walked around in a tight circle for a couple moments, careful to avoid making even the slightest of noises.

I contemplated everything I could do as of now without drawing attention to myself, and I couldn't exactly think of any. I frowned absently and headed over to the window, silently lifting it open so that the fresh morning breeze entered the room through the screen. I inhaled deep, realizing just how much being in doors made me miss the outside. My fingers fidgeted against the sill as every ounce of my being fought the urge to crawl through the window and be free. But, I had more self control than most and I knew that leaving now wouldn't be in my favor both healthwise and Flock friendship level wise. So instead, I simply sat down against the wall below the window and sucked in lungfulls of the crisp air.

"I should be able to leave either tomorrow or the next day." I thought to myself, based on my various experiences of injuries and how fast they healed. And, I could guarantee I'd be gone the moment I could. If only the Flock could have inherited the DNA from the more solitary type of birds.

My stomach growled noisily shortly after that thought, and I absently gripped at it. So much for not making a noise, although I seriously doubted any of them would have heard it. I glanced up at the window, yet again, and lamented the change in my daily schedule. I debating going to the kitchen to get food when there was faint knock on my door. I looked up and saw my favorite mind-reader walking into the room, a slight bounce in her step signifying that she was clearly happy about something.

"Morning, Daveigh!" She said brightly, but kept her voice soft.

"Good morning, Angel." I replied curtly, with a slight smile. "Do you always get up this early?"

"Nah, only if we're being attacked or something."

"So, I take it you guys are under attack?" I asked in amusement.

"Nah." She grinned at me, before taking a seat across from me on the floor. "Why are you sitting here...?" She trailed off, obviously not seeing the point of sitting beneath a window that happened to be less then 3 feet away from the bed. I shrugged. We were silent for awhile as I waited for her to say what she had came in here to say.

"Guess what?" She finally started, I didn't say anything, not really wanting to take a guess. "Max said you can join the Flock!" She finished, voice brimming with enthusiasm. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the wall, fighting the urge to bang my head against the wall instead.

"That's great..." I managed to say after a long pause. I opened my eyes and added the inevitable 'but' to the statement. "But, no thanks. I told you last night why I don't want to join you guys."

"I know that." She waved it off as though it was a minor detail. "But, we need you-"

"No, you don't, Angel. And you know it, too." I cut her off, my voice calm. "If anything, you only think I need you when I've survived just fine on my own. But other that, I'm not seeing how you guys i_need_/i me, being that like me, you guys have survived just fine with the 6 of you." Her face fell and she stared at me long and hard.

"But...we iwant/i you in the Flock." She said quietly. I ignored the we bit...knowing that it was mostly true...save for a member or two. But it was the 'want' part that caught me off guard. While I knew most of them had wanted me to join, I hadn't taken into considderation just what that meant. And for someone who lived on her own with little human interraction, being wanted was an experience I couldn't say I'd ever really experienced. And as much as being wanted sounded appealing, the difficult side of me was still fighting.

"You want me in the Flock." I corrected.

"Nuh-uh, me, Gazzy, Nudge, and Iggy all want you in the Flock."

"But that still leaves the two most influencial people in the Flock against me. And that's more than enough, considdering I don't want to be in the Flock at all." She stared at me blankly, and I had to change my wording a bit.

"That still leaves the two who make the decisions." I rephrased, and she nodded once. "Even though Max may have given me permission, it still doesn't change the fact she doesn't like me, Fang's view is essentially the same as hers, and I don't really want to join you guys." She seemed to think about this for awhile before speaking up again.

"But now that you've been here, Dr. Martinez might say something to the School and they'd know where you are anyway."

"Then I'll kindly ask her not to do that, and even if she does, that's a risk I'd still be willing to take alone. So, if you want me to stay, little girl, you're going to have to come up with some better arguments than that." I said playfully, while remaining resolute on my answer.

"You should get to know the Flock!" She suggested out of nowhere.

"Angel, you're missing the point. I'm going to be leaving within the next 24 to 48 hours...for good. There's not much point to get to know everyone."

"But you're getting to know me." She pointed out.

"Because you started it." I said quickly, hoping I wasn't falling into a trap.

"So, if the others started it, you'd get to know them?"

"That's not-"

"I'll go get them!" And with that she scrambled to her feet and darted out the door. Yeah, I had definitely fallen into a trap. When I was sure she was down the hallway, I began banging my head against the wall. I'd basically just done myself in, and it was going to be extremely difficult to get out of this one. I heard footsteps come down the hallway and into the room, and I peeled open an eye to see the Mystery Gang minus Daphne and Freddy. I blew a strand of hair out of my eyes and cast an unsure glance at Angel. She only smiled sweetly at me in reply before following the others into the room.

"'Sup?" I said reluctantly, fidgeting the rip in the knees of my jeans.

"Not much." Iggy said with a grin, his gaze resting slightly above my eyebrows. It may not have been perfect, but for a blind kid, it was scarily close. I blinked in surprise and returned the smile...before realizing that he couldn't see it anyway. If it hadn't been for the fact that he could probably make a bomb in under a minute, I might have felt sorry for him. But I knew he was a survivor and would be able to hold his own in almost any given situation, and for that I respected him. Taking pity on him would be a waste of time and energy, not to mention it would be the farthest thing from accurate in his case.

"Err, well, I don't really-" I started, suddenly feeling incredibly awkward. But lucky for me, Nudge interrupted.

"So are you going to stay?!" She exclaimed. I didn't know whether I should remain difficult and say something along the lines of "Stay here for two weeks? No." Or just be blatantly honest and say something along the lines of "I'd really rather not."

"Well...um-"

"If this is about publicity, it's not that bad. In fact, it's great! I had always wanted to be in a newspaper, and by joining the Flock, I was able too!" Total said, rather meladramatically in my opinion.

"Yeah." Gazzy agreed, if only for the sake of agreeing with Total to make a point. He then continued on conversationally, adding his own opinion. "Being in the Flock's not that bad! Sure, we're always fighting. But we're always on the move, too. There's more freedom to just...be yourself."

While that did sound appealing, I could be myself when I was alone and in remote areas. I had even been able to occasionally venture into towns and cities and just blend into the crowds because no one knew who I was. There was no publicity involved, and definitely no mutated killers involved either. And to me, that sounded like freedom.

Angel must have picked up on this thought pattern, because her brow creased as she glanced at me. The look wasn't angry, it was more contemplative, as though she was trying to think of yet another excuse to get me to change my mind.

"And, you'd get to travel everywhere!" Nudge added, inching closer to me. "And we could totally get you some new clothes!" She finished giddily, eyeing my torn jeans that were so dirty, they were almost stiff. My shirt had been replaced with what looked like one of Ella's, being that my other one had probably been so covered in blood it would never go back to being it's original color.

"But, if you guys are kind of...you know, on the run, wouldn't shopping for clothes be kind of difficult?" I asked slowly, not bothering to hide my confusion.

"No, we have money from doing air shows in Los Angeles." Gazzy replied. That wasn't what I meant, but I didn't feel like pressing that question any further. I was in a dilema. If I went with them, admittedly, I'd welcome the company. For the most part. And, I would be able to be more free about flying. And the traveling did sound nice. However, since there's always a 'but' to every good situation, I was also focusing on the downsides of this deal. Life as an unknown would be gone forever, I'd be attacked or ambushed almost every other day, and I'd almost never have privacy what with Angel around. (I was sure to think this extra loud so she could catch on.) I saw her bite back a smile, which could simply mean she was only listening to my thoughts even more intently. It was a tough decision, and I felt my will power crumbling. But, I was still willing to resist, even if the attempts probably wouldn't be effective anymore.

"What to you think, Iggy?" Angel asked abruptly, as she turned to face him. He looked taken aback, and he glanced down at her and then quickly to me. Both of which were incredibly accurate. I didn't know why she was singling him out and I glanced at Nudge and Gazzy who shrugged.

"I guess...well, I mean...yeah. Yeah. She should stay. I mean, if she wants to." He said as he glanced down, clearly finding this situation as awkward as I was.

"See, we all want you to stay!" Nudge exclaimed.

"Not all of you," I muttered. I got the feeling I was repeating my earlier argument with Angel, and said mind-reader knew it too if her smirk was anything to go by.

"Yeah, well, Max and Fang don't count because two thirds of us want you in...and in Congress, that's enough to override a veto." She said, nodding her head firmly. All of us, myself included, stared at her in disbelief.

"I learned that in school a couple of months ago." She shrugged. "The point is, we want you to stay. And if Max and Fang don't, they're outvoted. Plus, Max gave you permission, so if she doesn't like it, it's her problem." I cringed, seeing Nudge's point, but I still didn't have any interest in angering their fearless leader and her boyfriend. But, with that kind of logic, there wasn't much I could say except...

"Well...I suppose I don't have much of a choice. Fine." I lamented in defeat. With that declaration, there were several shrieks of joy and Gazzy held up a fist. I reluctantly pounded it, and offered him a weak smile. Well, if anyone had been asleep, they certainly weren't now. Angel practically lunged at me and flung her arms around my neck.

"I knew you'd say yes! I'm so excited! This is going to be great!" She assured me.

"Yeah, can't wait!" I wondered if I had even sounded half as excited as she was. She withdrew from the hug and shot me a huge, angelic smile. She was adorable, and I couldn't help but wonder just how often she used that fact to her advantage.

"Come on, let's go see what Dr. Martinez is making for breakfast!" She proclaimed, acting as though she hadn't heard my latest mental note.

"Yeah. I'm starving!" Gazzy whined as he headed towards the door. Nudge followed, yelling something about how he better not eat all the good food first. I stared after them, until all of a sudden, I saw a large hand extend towards me. I glanced upwards and saw Iggy offering me his hand. I took it and half pushed myself to my feet and was half pulled by his strength.

"Thanks." I said releasing my hand from the gentle grasp, before being gripped on the crook of my elbow by Angel. She practically wrenched me out the door, and I nearly tripped at the sudden motion.

"Let's go!" She said brightly, and with that I knew that things were never going to go back to how they were before.

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	5. Chapter 5

**AN****: Rember how I said I'd update on the weekend...three weekends ago. **

**Yeah...so that didn't happen. My bad.**

**I had some hardcore studying to do for my AP History class, since I had the exam on Friday. Soooo, sorry about that. But, on the good side, I have no more homework for the rest of the school year, which means I will have more time to not have a life, and thus work on this story and what not.**

**...**

**But anyway, yes, this is a new chapter! It's in Max's point of view, and yes she is very _______ (Insert swear word here)y...but, there's a justified reason for it, in her perspective anyway.**

**And yes, the word 'awkward' will be used frequently, because that's just how Daveigh describes things, and experiences things in life in general. So, I'm aware I'm using it frequently, but it's important...**

**But other than that, enjoy! :3**

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Have I mentioned how tense I normally am? Or how even more tense I get when a new mutant bird-kid joins our traveling Circus we like to call the Flock? Well, if I haven't, believe me on the fact that I'm more than a tiny bit uptight. Aside from the urge to be difficult and prove to the Voice in my head that it was wrong, I really had no other real reason for agreeing on her admittance. None what so ever. In fact, I was banking on the fact that what's-her-name would go AWOL on us as soon as she possibly could. It seemed my sense of logic and wishful thinking weren't functioning correctly, that or, just my freaky save-the-world karma felt like biting me in the butt.

Anyway, like the rest of the Flock after recieving major injuries, she was better way earlier than the doctor's calculations, and raring to leave even before that. But what really surprised me was the fact she was silent about it. It wasn't a vocalized, witty type of urge to leave like the Flock and I did. Which seemed suspicious to me for reasons that I couldn't quite name. But, then again, when you've had wings for your whole life and scientists trying to kill you for just as long, you had a right to be suspicious of anyone and everyone.

Daveigh was no different. Sure she had wings, sure she was an outcast like us, and sure I could relate to her wing injury, but when all was said and done, she was still an outsider.

That being said, the day she decided she'd stay was un-freaking-bearable. I avoided her for as long as I could once Angel had told me her answer. Heck, if I didn't love my mother so much, I would have ate lunch alone in some nearby town. But I did love my mother, so I suffered through a lunch with her. Everyone was going balistic over her, blabbing away about things that I was careful to store away for future use. The first of which was a question by Nudge, which really didn't surprise me.

"So, Daveigh, do you travel a lot?" That was my Nudge, being her friendly and over talkative self. And I was surprisingly glad that she was at the moment, if only for interrogation.

"Um, kind of. I stick to the same general area for about a year before finding a new place to live." She said quietly. Was she lying?

"But it's always in a wilderness area?" Angel spoke up. Daveigh nodded once, nervously taking a bite from her bowl of Mac and cheese.

"That's so cool!" Gazzy exclaimed. "Have you ever been to the Amazon?" She glanced around at all of us, and I observed her expression. Almost impassive but still holding a slight trace of nervousness.

"Yeah, have you?" She tried in what I guessed was a lame attempt to start a conversation.

"No, but I really want to." Gazzy glanced at me, and I frowned ever so slightly. Geez, first the kid expects me to be okay with his pyromania and then he wants to travel to the Amazon Rainforest. I hated to seem like a butt-head, especially to the Flock, but I couldn't just sit here letting everyone get away with stuff for the sake of a stranger.

"So, do you ever go into cities or anything?" Mom asked, absently passing me the bottle of ketchup.

"Every once in a while when the need arrives." Daveigh said with a small shrug. We fell into a small silence as we all more or less stuffed our faces. She ate with the same kind of...well, ferocity that we did, but I could still see how tense she was. As I watched her eat out of the corner of my eyes, I began thinking of a whole bunch of questions to ask her, but since the plan was to silently investigate, I simply hoped that one of us would ask her some of the questions on my mind.

"Do you have any special abilities?" Angel asked matter-of-factly. I casted her a glance, mentally asking if she had asked because she heard me think it or if she was just genuinely curious. She blinked at the question and took a moment to answer it. To me, that extra moment seemed like hesitation which was a good indication of a lie...but, being that I didn't really like to talk about my 'special abilities' either, I recognized that she might not feel the urge to talk about any she gifts she might possess, expecially in the company of people she didn't know.

"What do you mean?" She said slowly. She knew dang well what Angel meant, and we both knew it if the cautious gaze she shot at me was anything to go by.

"Well, I can read minds, we all can breathe under water, Fang can blend into stuff, Nudge is good with technology, Gazzy can impersonate anyone perfectly, and Iggy can feel colors. Stuff like that..." My mother and the younger memebers of the Flock leaned closer to her, while me, Fang and Iggy kept cool, although it was no secret that we were getting interested now.

"Er, no. Last time I checked, I couldn't do any of those things. Sorry." She added sincerely at the end, as though she felt bad for not being more genetically enhanced. Gazzy and Nudge wilted a little, while me and Fang exchanged skeptical glances. She didn't have any special powers my rear end. Angel shot me an indignant look.

i"Don't be like that! She's telling the truth, and she's nice."/i I heard Angel's voice in my head.

i"Angel, sweetie. You've only known her for a day."/i I thought back as gently as I could.

i"That doesn't mean I can't read her thoughts." She snapped. I blinked, absolutely shocked at her willingness to defend this girl. That, and the fact she had completely lost her distrust factor towards people she really should distrust.

i"Max, she's not an Eraser or anything like that. She's not a scientist. And she has wings. She has every reason for us to at least give her a chance. Besides, I'm sick of automatically having to distrust people just because you say so."/i She thought defiantly. Once again, I was completely shocked. I had never said not to trust anyone, it was more just a common sense thing when your on the run.

"Max, are you okay?" Mom asked, noticing the sudden silence between me and Angel.

"Yeah, I'm fine." I said absently. She raised an eyebrow and stared me down for a few seconds before figuring that I was being honest and going back to eating her meal. I followed her lead and took a swallowed a spoonful of macaroni, all while keeping a close eye on Daveigh. She was looking at Angel, and I could just the thoughts they were exchanging.

"Have you ever built a bomb?" Gazzy asked suddenly. Give it up for pyromaniac bird-kid small talk. The look on her face after the question had sunk in would have made me laugh hysterically if I didn't hate her so much.

"Umm, no." She said slowly, unsure of where Gazzy was going with this. He lost a little bit of his enthusiasm at that statement, but regained it ten-fold as he suddenly thought of something.

"That's okay, that means me and Iggy will have to teach you!" He exclaimed, slapping a high-five with Iggy who looked excited at the prospect of a new recruit to the bomb enthusiasts group of the Flock, but he also seemed more reserved, as though he thought I might hit him if he showed too much support. I wouldn't have, but I still appreciated the calmness on his part.

"This is the best table conversation I've ever heard." Ella said with a laugh of disbelief. Everyone laughed except me laughed, ane even Fang cracked a grin. Again, in a normal situation, I might have laughed. But this was not a normal situation, and I was trying to make it loud and clear to Daveigh that I was strictly no nonsense, especially when it came to her.

"I'll agree with you on that one." Mom told her with a chuckle. I felt a pang of affection towards her, and once again, I was glad I had found my mother. But, as glad as I was about that, I wished she wasn't so nice, because then she could see my side of this Daveigh issue.

"So, you've never had any actual friends?" Nudge asked, keeping this exhilarating conversation going.

"Yeah, I guess you could say that." Daveigh replied, scratching the back of her neck.

"None at all?" Nudge pressed.

"No, just some acquaintances. But I always left before I could get too attatched...it was a way of ensuring my privacy and safety."

"So, you've never had like a best friend...ever?"

"Nope."

"So, you haven't had a boy friend either?" Her eyes widened, and instantly I could tell just how awkward she felt. Not that I felt to bad for her, though. Nudge was just being Nudge, and if that made Daveigh feel awkward, that was her problem.

"Um, no. No boyfriend, either." She shifted in her seat, and I could tell she really didn't understand the significance of that question. I didn't either to be honest, but heck, maybe if enough awkward questions were asked, she'd bail on us. And that would make things so much easier. And lucky for me, Nudge kept it up.

"Well, that's totally okay! I mean, like I've never had one either. I'm just not lucky enough like Max and Fang over there." Instantly, I wished she wouldn't have kept it up as my face slowly started flushing. I purposely avoided looking at Fang, and would have inched my chair away from his if it wouldn't have looked so dang childish. "They just kind of always had each other, y'know? But anyway, you don't seem like you're too bad at talking to people and stuff. I'd never really be able to tell you were on your own in the wilderness for seven years." She chatted away.

"Thanks?" She said, with a small but genuine smile. She sounded unsure if that was supposed to be a compliment. She had a lot to learn about the conversational ways of the Nudge channel.

"Did you read about us? Because you kind of seemed to know a little bit about us when you woke up." She continued on, changing the subject without a second thought.

"I had only read about you once when I went into a nearby town. You guys were the headline for the some big Canadian magaizine. It was talking about how you guys had been spotted in various places and stuff like that. I knew who you guys were, along with a few facts but nothing else really." She shrugged once again, and I bit back saying something about how I thought that was a bunch of BS too. I folded my arms and leaned back in my chair, before continuing to listen to this waste of time. In non-Max terminology, it would otherwise be called a conversation.

"Did it have any flattering pictures of us?" Total piped up. Some dogs just liked attention way too much.

"They only had the headline picture, which was really non-descript." She replied with that stupid shrug. I was losing my patience, and I felt twitchy. I wanted to unleash all my thoughts on her continuous Bean Soup, but for the sake of my mother, I chose to be quiet and listen to several more questions blurted out by Nudge.

"How did you learn how to fly? Did you teach yourself?" She inquired, as she shoveled a massive spoonful of jello into her mouth.

"I...I guess I taught myself." There was something in that hesitance that made me look up at her, trying to find some sort of lie. She looked uncomfortable, as she had through out this ungodly _long_ dinner, but in a calm sort of way. Her demeanor made it hard to tell whether she was yanking my sleeve or not. She fell silent, and the rest of us waited for her to say more, with that bird-kid impatience of ours. She stared at her macaroni as though trying to find the words to say. That or mentally calculating the risks of telling more. It was that sort of silence that I had seen way too much in the School that made me distrust her even more.

Was I seriously the only one noticing the freaking similarities here?!

"Aren't you excited to fly again, though? Won't it be great?" Nudge was being way too naive.

"Oh yeah. Even though I'll miss the wilderness." She added, glancing at me. It was that glance that made some primal avian instinct of mine snap, and my silent interrogation plan fell to pieces.

"No one's making you stay." I spoke up, keeping my voice even, although it didn't conceal the obvious threat within those 5 words. She set down her fork slowly and looked me square in the eye. I couldn't read anything from her expression, which kind of ticked me off. I hated it when the Flyboys and robots had attacked us and not shown any sort of expression, but they were robots, they didn't have much of a choice. Daveigh did have a choice, and she was purposely choosing the option that would tick me off more. The nerve of some people.

She opened her mouth to say something, but suddenly, Angel broke the tension. "No one's making her leave, either." She stated, calmly taking a sip from her chocolate milk. She glanced at me with an innocent look, and I raised an eyebrow at her. I was expecting her to send me some of her thoughts on my recent...Maxness, but my head remained Angel-free. It stung to see her supporting Daveigh more than me, but even I knew that sitting here and trying to guess her thoughts and guilt her into siding with me wouldn't change that fact, either. Which was another slap in the face. I clenched my fists, before shoving my chair backwards with barely contained anger.

"I'm going to take a shower." I muttered as I booked it out of the dining room. I wanted to get as far away from that dinner as possible. In other words, I had no intention of taking a shower.


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: This ones a longer chapter. Entirely in Daveigh's POV. **

**Aaaaand now, I'll answer some questions that haven't been asked, but if I was reading this and not posting it, these would be questions I'd ask.**

**-Q: When will some Daviggy occur? **

**A: When I'm done setting up Daveigh's issues with Max.**

**-Q: What issues will these be?**

**A: You'll see.**

**-Q: What does Daveigh look like/why hasn't she been described?**

**A: When I first started writing this, I wanted to create an OC who people could relate too, instead of another Max (And/or any other unrealistic character.) Don't get me wrong, I love Max to death, and personality wise, most times I can relate to her, but the fact she was supposed to save the world, is the most genetically enhanced of the Flock etc, makes her seem kind of really supernatural. I was going for a character that wouldn't have too specific of standards/traits that wouldn't seem too fradulent. By not describing what she looks like, I think it enables people to be better able to just...relate. **

**-Q: Daveigh is really awkward. Will she be involved in any awkward shenanigans/situations.**

**A: But of course! What is a story without those awkward shenanigans! :3**

**Other than that, enjoy and have a fabulous Memorial Day! :D**

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When Dr. Martinez opened the door and I was able to take in a huge breath of fresh air, it took all I had not to take off right then and there. However, even with my limited knowledge on social interactions, I knew that doing such an action would probably be considered rude. So, instead, I forced myself to be very still as I tensed the muscles in my body, waiting for the exact moment where I could bolt out of the door.

"I'd tell you to be careful and not to over exert yourself, but if your anything like Max and the Flock here, those words would mean nothing to you." Dr. Martinez said with an affectionate chuckle. I smiled rather awkwardly, before figuring it'd probably be wise to say something.

"Thank you so much for your help, Dr. Martinez." I said doggedly, as I glanced out the door. I truly did appreciate her immense amounts of help, and I doubted I'd ever be able to repay her for it. However, despite my gratitude towards her, my urge to fly again was too strong to focus on anything other than the feeling of total freedom that came with flight.

"Just know you are always welcome back here." She said with a smile. This statement temporarily stunned me. I blinked in surprise, unsure of what the implication was. After a moment or two of internal debate, I deduced this was a sign of being wanted. Which, by itself made me feel slightly uncomfortable. But with the additional icy glare from Max that this statement had caused, my urge to leave returned tenfold. I nodded and muttered a brief thank you before watching Dr. Martinez give each flock member a hug, giving Max the longest plus a kiss on the forehead.

"Well then, keep in touch."

"Will do, Mom." Max assured her as she withdrew from the hug.

"Okay then, I'll see you..." She trailed off, unsure of when the next meeting would be.

"As soon as I poosibly can." Max smiled...and I noted that she didn't do that a lot. However, as soon as it had appeared, it vanished as she spun around and headed towards the door. Fang followed close behind her, with Gazzy and Iggy exiting shortly after. I turned to Angel, unsure of what to do, unsure if this was finally the moment I had been waiting for for at least three days.

"Go on." She urged. I took that as my okay to leave, and I wasted no time on formalities. I nodded back, sucked in a deep breath, and took off in a top speed sprint. I unfurled my wings before gaining too much momentum. The wind caught them in one swift motion, and like that I was being lifted off the ground. I flapped my wings in several forceful downstrokes, wincing with each one due to the unexpected soreness. But, I was in the air at long last, so I would gladly take just about any type of pain at this particular moment. The wind whipped my hair arond me and ruffled my secondary feathers ever so slightly, and the familiarity of those minute actions made me crack a grin. You never knew how much you missed something until you lost it. And then got it back.

However, my wave of joy didn't last too long, due to the fact I realized no one had taken off the ground yet, and were all simply watching me fly. I glanced upwards in discomfort, focusing my attention away from them. As I did so, I began to notice the things I could do now that they weren't in the air with me. I could easily bolt and attempt to vanish into my quiet existence. But again, my plans to 'escape' were thwarted by the slim probabilities. I sighed thickly and watched as Angel began ascending upwards towards me. She was quickly followed by Gazzy, Iggy, and Nudge, with Max and Fang flanking them from behind at a distance of about 15 feet. This was it, I was leaving. I was leaving Dr. Martinez's, I was leaving Canada, and most importantly, I was leaving my peaceful and quiet lifestyle. This was it, there was no turning back now. The thought was surprisingly nerve-wracking. Upon this thought, I took in a deep breath of the crisp air before following the Flock who were now heading Southwest.

As much as I wanted to enjoy the freedom of unrestricted flying, I felt as though I shouldn't enjoy it too much in front of the Flock. While they were all completely comfortable with flying however they wanted, I was well aware of the fact that things would be different for me. Afterall, I was the outsider. So due to that fact, I fought the urge to gain altitude and fly a good 500 feet above them. But my flying preferences clearly weren't the only diffence between me and the Flock. They all knew how to talk and interact, and I was just kind of awkwardly ambling behind them. I didn't really want to talk to them, but even I knew that with two thirds of the Flock eager to talk to me, I wouldn't get my wish.

As if on cue, Nudge coasted over so she was flying on my left side, with me being about 5 feet above her. "Your wings are so pretty in the light! And when you fly it's just gorgeous!" She exclaimed giddily. I glanced at the wing that had been damaged and grimaced.

"Thank you?" I replied...realizing it came out as more of a question. But, she must have found my response hilarious, because she burst out laughing. I glanced around hesitantly, unsure if I should laugh with her.

"Daveigh, you really don't have _any _social skills do you?" She grinned at me cheekily, and I scratched the back of my neck.

"No, I really don't." I admitted with a small laugh.

"I never thought I'd see someone with less social skills than us." She continued on, before changing the subject to an idle chatter. "I can't believe you've never, ever had a friend! Did you like...have any pets? How far have you ever flown? I bet not that far, because you seem kind of careful about being seen and stuff...but no, you did say you've flown to a lot of places. Do you know any good flying techniques?" I blinked, trying to digest her rapid words. In fact, she had been speaking so fast, I almost felt kind of dizzy.

"Nudge...no offense, but shut up." Iggy snorted as he coasted maybe 10 feet below us. I bit back a smile upon the scowl Nudge directed towards him.

"I'm just getting to know her. After all, she's in the Flock now, we kind of need to get to know her, you know!"

"Okay, okay." He held up his hands to show he agreed. "But could you do it a little bit slower, with a little less words?" Nudge stuck her tongue out at him, before frowning as she remembered he couldn't see it anyway. He grinned, before angling his left wing downwards to veer off towards the Gasman.

"Well, anyway..." She continued on, as though he hadn't interrupted. "So you have no idea who your parents are?"

I honestly couldn't even begin to fathom where that thought had came from, so I merely just replied with a simple, if not confused "Nope."

"You don't know anything about them?" She put extra emphasis on the word anything.

"Nothing." I repeated.

"That's sad. I know how that goes, I didn't know anything about my parents either until about a year ago, when me and Fang went to Tipisco to find my parents." Upon the mention, Fang's turned his gaze to Nudge and me. When he saw that it was nothing, he returned to looking straight ahead. "It ended up like sh-"

"Nudge!" Max warned, not even bothering to turn around to face us. Which signified to me, that she was listening to every single word we said.

"Sorry." Nudge brushed off insincerely. "Anyway, it ended up turning up like crap, and I didn't find out anything important, anyway." Her face fell, and I looked at her, feeling as though I should comfort her somehow, but unsure how to do so.

"Wouldn't you rather know, than being completely in the dark about something like that though?" I told her gently, returning my gaze forward.

"I guess." She sniffed, sounding slightly convinced. I inwardly winced, frantically trying to think of something else to say. I wanted to say something along the lines of "The Flock seems more connected than a regular family." But, to me, I felt that having been with them for approximately 3 days, while being unconcious for one of them didn't give me a right to really make a judgement like that, even if it was a positive one. So, I debated reaching out to pat her in confort, but ultimately decided against it due to the fact that if I did, Max would probably view that as some form of attack on Nudge. Plus, the action just seemed awkward. So, after a drawn out pause, I simply offered her a sincere smile. She stared at me in surprise for a moment before grinning, which I guess meant she accepted my flawed logic. She also must have figured I was feeling kind of uncomfortable.

"I'm gonna go talk to Total about...something." She alerted me, before tucking in her wings slightly as she dove downwards towards Angel and Total. I would have smiled in relief, if that wouldn't have seemed suspicious. The more I thought about it, every action I did seemed as though it would be viewed as suspicious by Max. As if to prove my point, less than 3 minutes after Nudge had left, Angel's voice flooded my head.

_"Max is thinking some really mean stuff about you." _Her voice was quiet and apologetic, as though feeling bad about Max's hostility. I really had figured as much that while she wouldn't vocalize her complaints about me, nothing was going to stop her from complaining about me mentally. I cringed, however, knowing that I wouldn't particularly want to hear what was going through Max's mind. I inhaled deeply and once again, I missed the days where I was on my own.

_"Oh...uh....like what?" _I finally replied, deciding that I might as well know what she said, even if I didn't particularly want to.

_"It's mostly how she thinks your trying to separate the Flock from her or betray us and stuff like that. I've heard her use a couple of swear words too."_ I blinked in surprise, before craning my neck to look at Max who was about 50 feet in front of me. Her head was angled slightly towards Fang, who was coasting next to her. Her mouth was moving and Fang was focusing intently on what she was saying. It was then that I realized I couldn't hear what she was saying, and I instantly noticed how we were all flying upwind, which explained everything. I also recognized that she was talking simply because she knew that I wouldn't be able to hear her. I knew she was harsh, bitter, and a real witch...but that just left me dumbfounded. How could she think that I was going to separate the Flock when I never wanted to be in the Flock in the first place? It didn't make sense, and it made me kind of angry.

However, before I could think about it any further, she noticed I was looking at her and she stopped talking as she turned her head to face forward. But not before shooting me an icy glare. I mean, I could handle anger. But from Max, I got the feeling that things wouldn't go so well whether iI ignored her anger or confronted it. The more I thought about it, though, I guessed things would be calmer for a while if I ignored her wrath, or at least tolerated it.

_"Don't let her get to you. I'm sure she'll get over it." _Angel told me reassuringly. I glanced at her, and a small smile lit up her angelic face. I couldn't help but offer a weak smile in return.

After that, her voice receded from my head, and I enjoyed another brief period of alone time. It was maybe 10 minutes, but it sure felt a lot shorter, because the next person to approach me was the Gasman. And he was just as eager to talk to me as Nudge had been, even if he did talk slower.

"So, have you ever wrestled with wolves or other wild animals or something?" He beamed at me, and I instantly saw the resemblence between him and Angel. Were they related?

"Um, yeah, I have. Why do you ask?' I replied with a slight chuckle, that probably came out as more of a nervous action than one of genuine amusement. But, regardless of what it sounded like, he was oblivious and kept on talking.

"Well, you said you had never seen an Eraser and stuff, so I figured that maybe if you'd, like, tackled a wolf or wrestled with a grizzly bear or something, you'd be able to take on one easily. And you have, so you'd be able to kick some Eraser butt...well, you would if they still existed." He rambled innocently. I might have taken that as a compliment if I wasn't so confused as to when I had said I hadn't seen an Eraser...or what an Eraser even was.

"Thanks." I said as sincerely as I could, not wanting to squash his enthusiasm.

"So, what animal _have_ you fought with?"

"I have fought with wolves like you said, and a mountain lion or two. But I generally try to avoid bears."

"Oh, well I can see why you'd want to do that. Fighting with a bear would be kind of difficult, unless you had like a bomb or something. But you already said you dno't know how to make one...so that wouldn't work." Gazzy's continuous references of bombs and other explosives made me wonder just how many times he'd detonated things in the past. It also made me unsure if I wanted to know just how many times he had detonated things in his past. "But yeah, have you ever seen an Fly-boy?"

"Um, no?"

"M-bot?"

"Nope."

"Wow you've never seen anything!" He seemed surprised that I hadn't seen or even heard of any of these...things. Which made me wonder the extent of danger in the Flocks life.

"Well, nothing like you guys have, that's for sure." I agreed softly.

"You'll be okay though, I can tell." He assured me. My quiet tone hadn't been a lack of faith towards fighting these Erasers, or whatever the heck they fought on a regular basis, it was more of a realization of all the differences between me and the Flock. "How fast can you fly, anyway?" He asked, changing the subject effortlessly.

"How fast can you fly?" I asked back, regaining the urge to be slightly difficult. That, plus I didn't want to seem extremely slow in comparison to the rest of the Flock if I announced how fast I could or couldn't fly without any prior information on them.

"I asked you first." He reminded. I shook my head with a slight smile, before finally saying. "My fastest speed was somewhere close to 150, not on a jet stream."

"Yeah, you'll be fine." He repeated, with a firm nod.

"How fast can you fly?"

"About the same, I guess." He shrugged, as though he didn't care that much and it wasn't too important. And then, out of no where, he let one rip. I'm used to the most rancid smells you can possibly think of, but when the Gasman let loose his signature move, I could honestly say that his gassy ways were the worst smelling thing I had ever smelled. I shot my hands to my nose and reflexively shot myself up about 20 feet in altitude.

"That's so bad! Could you warn a person next time you do that?!" I nearly gagged as I said that before beginning to suck in lungfuls of crisp, non-polluted air. He was cackling like a maniac from beneath me, and I heard him manage an insincere apology.

"Sick, dude!" Fang yelled, the first time I had heard him speak since I had met the Flock. Gazzy continued his laughing fit for another minute or so until the scent finally dissipated. Once the smell was effectively out of my nostrils, I was silently grateful for the conversation ender that was the Gasman's intestinal malfunctions. Glad to be back to another partial feeling of solitude, I focused my attention beneath me, and watched the scenery whiz past. We were flying over the Canadian Rockies, and I figured we'd probably be entering the States soon.

"Max, I'm hungry." Nudge blurted, edging closer to her Fearless Leader. She nodded once after this statement and frowned ever so slightly. I watched as she scanned the surrounding area. She seemed to be focusing on a point slightly to her right and I followed her gaze. It was a small cluster of lights that signified a small town. I was tempted to divebomb downwards and just hunt for a couple of squirrels or something, if only because that was what I was used to. I didn't feel comfortable having the Flock treat me to a meal from a Gas Station or better.

"It's getting late, too." Fang told her, in a tone that might have seemed gentle if it wasn't so devoid of emotion. Max nodded once more, and I could have swore her jaw muscles tensed as she did so.

"Okay, lets go check out that town and we can grab something from a gas station, and then we'll look for a place to crash for the night." She said at long last, sounding so monotonous that to the untrained ear, one wouldn't be able to tell she was incredibly pissed off. I took in a deep breath, and recognized sooner or later, she was going to lose it. And odds were, it wasn't going to be on any member of the Flock.


	7. Chapter 7

**AN: Yeah, this chapter is really short. D:**

**And the next chapter is insanely long....**

**Wow, I'm inconsistent. But, I'll try to make the next one shorter and less boring at the beginning. But I promise you this, next chapter will have some hardcore action in it. Not in the Flock vs. Mad Scientists way...but other ways.**

**But until then, this is it. Max's point of view...I think there is one or two swear words. But this story is rated T...so it should be expected, I suppose. Plus, I'm rereading the MR series, and there are a significant amount of swears in each book. (Not even close to obscene, but they do show up.)**

**....**

**Uhhhh.....Next chapter will be pretty awesome sauce, so bear with me on this one! **

**Hope you find it okay! :3**

**Gah! Thank you all for the reviews and stuff too! It makes my day! :D**

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Once we had grabbed approximately 25 sandwiches from a local gas station, I began scanning for a place to hunker down. Less than 10 minutes after we left, I found a cozy, you guessed it, cave.

"Cave at 2 o'clock." I called out, flicking the tips of my wings upwards to bank towards the entrance. The Flock, and stranger whom I did not like, followed my lead and we all coasted into the entrance within seconds of each other. I chucked my backpack into the corner of the cave, with enough force to show I was kind of irritated, but not hard enough to make me seem any less leaderly. I frowned, and did a quick head count after that, feeling kind of...off by having to add an extra number to my routine attendance drills.

_"Change is good, Maximum." _My voice decided to announce.

_"Is that so, Voice? Are you implying pocket change, because the other kind of 'change' hasn't exactly been my idea of a good time." _I replied bitterly. Don't know about you guys, but arguing with a voice seems kind of psychotic to me. And yet, oddly therapeutic.

Ah, hell, who was I kidding. Therapeutic my rear end.

"_You knew perfectly well what I meant, Max. Change doesn't have to be a good time, but in the long run change is good."_ I might have continued yelling at the Voice in my head if it hadn't been for the fact Fang had apparently asked me something and prodded me lightly in the arm.

"Huh?" I asked. _Note to self: _Sound more intelligent after zoning out. _Re:_ Don't zone out.

"How long do you want to stay here." I shrugged as I glanced out the mouth of the cave. We were in a pretty remote area, so I guessed it might be safe to stay here for a day or two. As of now, we had nothing better to do anyway. Now that Itex was gone, and Mom hadn't asked me to go on any more environmental recon missions, we were essentially the mutant bird-kid equivalent to retired old humans.

"Maybe a day or two." I replied, meeting his dark gaze. He nodded once in agreement before leaning back against the wall and pulling out his laptop from his bag. I stared absently as he typed for a moment or two before deciding to step up and be the leader I am.

"Hey, you guys, how 'bout a vertical stack?" I suggested. Wordlessly, my Flock gathered around me and we all stacked fists. I was about to tap the back of Gazzy's hand when I remembered our mystery girl. I looked up and saw her sitting next to the mouth of the cave, as far away from us as the cave permitted. She was fidgeting with the loose skin on her elbow as she watched us in obvious discomfort. I narrowed my eyes at her and she quickly looked away, and focused her attention on the nearly full moon. I glared at her for a few seconds longer, before returning to the stack and tapping everyone elses hands. When we were done with our daily ritual, Nudge glanced at me and then back to Daveigh, giving me the "You-should-be-nicer-to-bird-kids-we-just-met-and-give-her-a-chance" look. I seemed to be getting a lot of those lately.

But, as much as I hated to ruin on their parade, this was one issue I refused to let them win me over on.

That being said, I shook my head almost imperceptibly when Angel and Nudge went over to talk to what's-her-face. Were all children this trusting? Or was it just an avian-human recombinant thing?

"Get some sleep." Fang whispered into my ear as he came up from behind me and began massaging my shoulders. Have I ever mentioned how good he is at back massages? I nodded slightly, and I felt him rest his chin on top of my head. And even after almost 3 months of 'dating' him, I was ashamed to admit my face still turned a deep, humiliating shade of red upon physical contact with him.

"How about you get some sleep? I'll take first watch." I grinned up at him, deciding that it wasn't wise to sleep when a stranger who might just shank us in the night was in our presence. He smirked, but didn't argue as he kissed me lightly on the crown of my head. I watched him as he found a spot next to the already sleeping Gazzy, and pulled out a blanket from his bag. He tossed it over Gazzy and Nudge, before simply zipping up his hoodie more and settling down to sleep. Such a gentlemen, when he wasn't being a jerk, I noted with a small smile.

I then decided to focus on the only member of _my_ Flock who wasn't hunkering down. "Angel, sweetie, why don't you get some sleep?" I told her patiently, completely ignoring Strange-girl who sat beside her. Angel met my gaze with her big, blue and innocent ones. I half expected her to protest, what with her recent streaks of rebellion. But she didn't, as she sensed I must not have wanted to argue, and instead got up and planted a sticky kiss on my cheek.

"G'night, Max." She whispered, as she curled up in a ball next to Iggy. I stood on my feet for a good 30 minutes until I was sure all of them were sleeping, casting glances at my least favorite stranger as I did so. But when all of their breathing was as regular as a mutant's can get, I slunk down against the cave wall noiselessly so that I was sitting across from our "guest." I'll admit, I'm pretty good at shooting deadly looks at people I don't like, but even the best of those looks are wasted when the other person stares out of a cave for most of them, or simply stares back with no emotion on their face. There's your lesson for today, folks.

I mean, as I sat across from her, I could tell she was feeling extremely uncomfortable. But, instead of going for a fly or going to sleep or something normal like that, she just sat there silently, switching between acknowledging my glares or not. Let me tell you, it ticked me off. And it continued to ante up my blood pressure as her silence lapsed on for an hour or two. At long last, however, I got so sick of our one sided stare down, I figured maybe if I went off for a fly, she'd go to sleep and I wouldn't have to deal with her until the morning. I also guessed that if she did decide to shank us in the middle of the night, my Flock would be fully capable of pounding her to a pulp. And while I might want to see that event happen, I wanted to get out of this cave even more. So, with that, I cast her one final glare, before rising to my feet and flinging myself out of the cave entrance into the night air. I snapped open my wings, angling them in such a way that they would catch the air silently so as not to wake up everyone else, and began the familiar process of flying. I felt what's-her-face staring at me as I gained altitude, and in order to get the attention off of me quicker, I sucked in a deep breath and poured on the super speed, flying out of her sight in less than a second.

I flew for a good hour or two, thinking about our current "situation," before deciding to head back to our home sweet cave. With my raptor vision, I was able to see from about a mile away that mystery bird girl was no longer sitting at the mouth of the cave, and I half hoped she had just taken off into the night and would never return.

Wishful thinking.

It turned out that as I got closer to the cave, I saw she had simply retreated farther back into the cave and was tucked into a small crevace, her breathing slow and deep. I frowned and retracting my wings in just in time to glide into the cave. I landed noislessly and glanced at her once more, determining she was indeed asleep, before curling up next to Angel. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day. And maybe hell would freeze over.


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: Okay, so, the next two chapters were originally going to be one...**

**But that turned out to be an eyesore. **

**So, I split it up, and it's still pretty...longish. But, on the plus side, finally some Daveigh/Iggy stuff going on, and some action! So, in the scheme of things, it all balances out, I guess. XD**

**Um, I'll be busy with Marching Band until early-July, so until then, I don't know how often I'll update. So, just keep on keeping on, and know how much I appreciate you guys for reading these chapters! You guys rock my freaking socks. :3**

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When I woke up at the crack of dawn, I slowly and silently uncurled myself from my spot in the small crevace. I sat up and leaned forward, using my arms for balance and peered at the Flock. All of them were still sleeping, which didn't surprise me, but I figured if I wasn't completely silent, that would change. I frowned slightly and looked away from them, feeling like the outsider I was. Last night had only proved I didn't belong here, and I wasn't entirely sure I ever would. I shook my head slightly and stared out the mouth of the cave where I saw the sky beginning to tinge with pink as the sun slowly began to rise over the mountain tops. I got a compelling urge to just run out of the cave and go for a fly as the sun rose, but common sense prevented me from doing so. Flying off would only make Max hate me more, and while that did make me uncomfortable, I was willing to risk it. But, flying off would also make her not trust me, and that would mean she'd be able to alienate everyone else. The situation could be bad, or good, I supposed, but in the long run, it would not be in my favor.

So, instead of going for a fly, I noislessly rose to my feet and headed over to the mouth of the cave. There was a small ledge right on the entrance, and I decided to sit there and just watch the sunrise until the others woke up. I slowly sank down and let my feet dangle over the edge as I quietly examined the scenery. It was relaxing, and for a moment, I was able to distract myself from the Flock. I rolled my shoulders slightly, loosening my wings as I did so and sighed thickly. How had I managed to get myself into this mess?

About a half an hour after the sun had completely rose above the peaks of the mountains, Max woke up. She must have noticed right away that I wasn't in the cave, because within seconds she had walked onto the ledge and cast me a glare. I looked up at her to meet her stare, trying to keep my face impassive, although the difficlut side of me felt like saying something about how she had taken off last night. But, the odds of me saying something like that and being able to get away without a bloodly lip were pretty slim.

She shook her head after a moment or two, deciding she didn't want to waste her breath talking to me and turned to go back to the cave and wake up the others.

"Rise and shine." I heard her say to the Flock, who responded with not so enthusiastic groans.

"I don't wanna." Nudge whined groggily from inside the cave.

"And I don't want to have to throw your butt off of the cliff. Which I will if you don't get up." She said with a surprising tone of gentleness.

"Okay, okay. I'm up. Geez." I heard a rustling which signified to me that Nudge was slowly sitting up.

"Do I have to say the same thing to you too, Ig?" Max said to Iggy.

"Nah. You can paraphrase." He replied through a thick yawn. I heard her release a noise of frustration, and I would have laughed if I knew she wouldn't be able to hear it. I continued to listen to similar protests to Max's wake up call for another 5 minutes or so, until Nudge came out onto the ledge.

"Good morning, Daveigh! When did you wake up?"

"Crack of dawn," I replied.

"_Why?"_ She looked at me as though I was completely insane, and I merely shrugged in reply. "Are you hungry?" She asked once she decided she didn't want to know why I had woken up so early. I was about to say no, so as not to anger their dictator, but my stomach growled rather noisily as I opened my mouth.

"Yeah, I guess so." I said quietly, hoping Max didn't hear me.

"Hey, Max, I'm hungry. So is Daveigh." Nudge declared for me. I inwardly winced, and wondered just how much Nudge talked on a regular basis.

"Oh, so am I." Gazzy chipped in.

"Okay, once you guys get your butts up, we'll go find a place to eat." That comment seemed to wake them all up, and almost instantaneously, I heard shuffling of feet against the cave floor. A few seconds later all of them were walking out towards the mouth of the cave. I felt several of them staring at me as they spotted me from my sitting position on the ledge. I felt awkward by continuing to sit there while they all stood around me, so I pushed myself to my feet and brushed some dirt off my legs before looking up at them. Angel smiled sweetly at me and Iggy's gaze was somehow spot on me. I shifted weight on my feet and waited for Max to give the okay to leave.

"Okay, let's head out, you guys." She said at long last, meeting Fang's gaze briefly. I glanced at Angel and she simply grinned at me before jumping off the edge of the cliff. I watched her descend for a few feet before taking in a deep breath and following her lead. I unfurled my wings about 50 feet above the ground and took several hard down and upstrokes until I had risen high enough to angle my left wing to veer closer to the Flock.

"Can we go to Burger King or something?" Gazzy prodded, coasting closer to Max.

"Sure thing, kiddo." She told him, sounding almost nice. I wondered if I'd ever get to see that side of her.

"Have you ever been to Burger King?" Angel asked from above me. I tilted my head upward to look at her with a small smile.

"Nope, never." I told her sincerely.

"Wait, hold up! You've _never_ been to Burger King?" Iggy gaped at me from about 3 feet below me. I shook my head, not understanding why it mattered. "You poor deprived child!" He shook his head with a grin. "Your life is incomplete."

"Thanks." I replied with a small chuckle.

"Have you ever had any sort of fast food?" He pressed.

"Um, not fast food, no. I've been to a family owned restraunt once or twice though."

"Oh, god! It's worse than I thought!"

"What is?"

"Your life." He said simply, laughing uncontrollably. I heard Angel and Gazzy stifle their laughter from above me, and I grinned at the statement as well. Nudge, however swooped past him and smacked his head.

"Not everyone's used to your sarcasm, Iggy." She scolded. He held up his hands in the universal sign of surrender.

"Okay, okay." He replied, all though he sounded as though he didn't care in the slightest what others thought about his sarcasm. He shot me a smile while meeting my gaze. While it may not have been on my eyes, it was so close, it was scary. Again, I was completely dumbfounded on how he was able to do that. And, the more I thought about it, I became more and more amazed at his skills and attitude in general.

"Ooooh, Max! Can we go to IHOP instead?" Nudge exclaimed, pointing below us where I saw a large sign advertising a nearby IHOP. Nudge's proclamation made Gazzy change his mind in a hearbeat.

"Yeah, let's go there instead!" He exclaimed as the rest of them made similar noises of agreement.

"Sounds like a plan." Max declared before angling her right wing downwards to bank towards the small building.

We landed in a patch of bushes and other shrubbery behind the building and casually brushed ourselves off as we headed around towards the front. I glanced up at the sign as we walked, trying to remember whether I had ever ate here or not. I figured knowing what IHOP even stood for would help me out a bit, so I racked my mind for possible abbreviations. Unfortunately, none of them sounded remotely like a place I'd ever consider eating at. I frowned and decided against asking about what IHOP stood for, knowing that it would sound highly stupid, and instead followed the Flock from a safe (But not too huge) of a distance into the restraunt. Instantly, I was greeted with the smell of breakfast foods and I suddenly remembered that I had been here before! Granted, it had been over 4 years ago, but I remembered it well. Pancakes. That was what they served, and then I recalled IHOP stood for International House of Pancakes. I smiled slightly to myself, and leaned against the wall gently as Max asked for a booth for 7.

I noticed how she paused before announcing how many she'd need a table for, but I was able to brush it off. I wanted pancakes way more than I cared about Max's hatred towards me. The waitress eyed us up with a weird look on her face before putting on a weak smile and guiding us to a large booth. I glanced around the restraunt, taking in the minute details. I didn't go into restraunts all that often, so needless to say, each time I did, I was always fascinated. I noticed the others were looking around too, but they seemed to be doing it in a way that suggested they were simply trying to plot the best escapes. Which, again, affirmed all prior knowledge that they did get attacked way too often.

I slid into the booth first, feeling as though if I sat on the edge, it would seem as though I was eager to leave them or something. Max, Fang, the Gasman, and Nudge filed into the seat across from me. Angel stood at the edge of the table, and gestured with her head for Iggy to go first. He lightly felt the edge of the booth with his fingertips before sitting down next to me in a swift motion. Angel neatly perched herself next to him, before shooting me an angelic smile. I blinked in confusion, unsure why she was looking so happy...or innocent, before deciding to look at the menu.

"This all looks so good!" Nudge murmered in awe as she studied the menu. Silently, I agreed and scanned it over my myself. There was a Butterscotch Pancake special which looked delicious if the picture was anything to go by. My mouth was already watering, and I had only covered the first portion of it. There was just way to much good food here. I was about to turn the page when I noticed Iggy holding his menu loosely in his hands that were resting on the table top about an arms length away from his body. He was staring at it, but obviously not seeing it, and I felt as though I should try to help him with it. But, something also told me that he probably wouldn't appreciate any sort of help. I glanced back to my menu as I tried to decide if I help him or something.

"_Just do it." _Angel's voice popped into my head, making me jump. And thus making Iggy turn to face me, looking slightly confused. "_He won't mind."_ She finished. What was she getting at?! I felt hopelessly lost in all aspects of Flock (or even human in general) interactions, and I wanted to bang my head against the nearest wall.

_"Just do it!" _She repeated more firmly this time. I shot her a quick, skeptical glance before turning to face Iggy, who had returned to staring at his menu.

"Um..." I started, completely unsure of where I was going with this. "The Stuffed French Toast stuff seems good...and they have this monster cheeseburger thing that comes with fries and pickles." I tried, mentally cringing as I prepared myself to be glared at or something. Instead, he looked at me, seeming surprised.

"Uh, yeah. That does sound good, actually. Yeah. I think I'll get that. Thanks." He said, with a sincere smile as he neatly folded the menu back up. I refrained from gaping at him or Angel, and instead buried my face in my menu.

"Are you guys ready to order?" A female voice asked, shortly after I had began looking at the menu again.

"Yes, we are." Max said matter-of-factly. "You might want to write this all down, though." The waitress nodded slowly, before pulling out her notepad and pen. "Okay, I'll have the Barbeque Ribs & Chicken, 2 orders of Blueberry Pancakes, and 3 Country Omlettes. Oh, and a large glass of orange juice, please." The waitress wrote this all down in a hasty, efficient scrawl, before looking up at Max as she realized just what she had wrote down.

"Um, Okay?" She said slowly, as though she wanted to play 20 questions, but knew that she'd get tipped better if she didn't. "How about you?" She glanced at Fang.

"Buttermilk Popcorn Shrimp & Fries basket, the Double BLT, 2 orders of the Breakfast sampler, and some pepsi." Although my astonishment to how much food they were ordering was pretty big, it was nothing compared to the waitress, who looked like even the thought of this much IHOP food was going to make her vomit. I listened as Gazzy ordered 2 orders of the Buttermilk Pancakes, the Bacon Temptation omlette, 2 Philly Cheese Steak Super-Stackers, a Crispy Chicken Salad, and a Danish Crepe. Nudge ordered a similar 2 orders of pancakes (The funny-face kind from the kids section), 3 Grilled Cheese Sandwhiches, an order of Onion Rings, 2 large salads, and a hot fudge sundae. Angel seemed to have a love of meat and ordered 4 massive orders of completely meat related things, while Iggy ordered what I had suggested along with 4 Omlettes and a Crepe. So, finally it was my turn.

"Um, I'll have the 2 orders of the Butterscotch Pancake things, 2 orders of the Crispy Chicken strips basket, and 3 orders of Mozzarella sticks." She wrote it down, studied the 4 sheets of paper she had used to record our orders and glanced up at us like we were crazy. But Max shot her a look that clearly said "We'll tip you so much better if you don't ask questions and just bring us the food." The waitress got the hint and hurried off, leaving the Flock and me to ourselves.

I was silently thankful I had sat on the edge of the booth because of the window right next to me. I turned to look out at the scenery, and I quickly got lost in thoughts and daydreams, while still being dismally aware of the Flock's conversations around me, so in the case I was addressed, I wouldn't come off as rude or stupid. As I looked outside, I got a compelling urge to go for a fly...or better yet, a fly back to some remote area with out them.. But, once again, cold hard logic and probability brought me back to the reality that I was in fact stuck here indefinitely.

"Daveigh, what do you think?" I heard Nudge ask me after awhile.

"Huh?" I replied...realizing that my effort to keep aware of them and not sound stupid hadn't worked as well as I had hoped.

"What do you think we should do? Just fly around and have fun or something, or try to look for our...your parents?" I blinked in surprise, completely dumbfounded about how this had came up...or at least, how it had came up so quickly. I wanted to say that I didn't want to find my parents, but I got the feeling this Mystery Gang had already attempted to find their parents, and so if I said that, I knew they wouldn't believe me for a second. And while a small part of me did want to know more about the first 8 years of my life, an exponentially larger part of me knew that I really didn't want to know. And that was the part I was going to listen to, if I could help it. So, with that, I tried to figure out how to be difficult while still telling the truth. After some debate, I decided the best way to do that would be to be vague and somehow try to change the subject or something.

"Uh, well..." I started, aware of all sets of eyes, including Total's, on me. "I mean, I don't know anything about them...so, um, looking for them wouldn't really...be necessary." I stopped, realizing I had no clue where I was going with this, and hoping that what I had said got the attention off of me. Afterall, I was the outsider, and while I could see why they'd want to know more about me, I was also able to see how focusing too much attention on me wouldn't end well. I was perfectly fine with the Flock making the decisions and keeping a low profile among them.

"Yeah, but-" Nudge started.

"Nudge, she said no. It's her choice." Max cut her off, sounding gentle. However, the look she shot me was anything but gentle. I couldn't win with her! I got the urge to bang my head against the nearest wall once again, but instead slid lower in my seat, feeling awkward and wishing I could just fade back into my sweet, lone existence.

"Oh, look! Some of our food is here!" Total exclaimed as he cleared his throat. Instantly, the Flock swivelled to face the waitress who was carrying about a third of what the Flock and I had ordered. I poked my head up and watched her too, immensely grateful for Total's change of subject. The waitress handed us each our respective plates before telling us she and another waitor would be back with the rest of it shortly, and hurrying back to the kitchen. I used the food as my excuse to shove my face and not talk, while the Flock simply seemed to be shoving their faces just for the sake of shoving their faces. Regardless of the reasons, once we got the rest of our food, I enjoyed over 20 minutes of complete, uninterrupted silence. Or at least, the kind of silence where I wasn't talked to.

Once the Flock finished eating, they laid the money down in the small folder our waitress had given us and booked it out of there. I followed at my safe distance behind them as we went back towards the shrubbery we had landed in. Max scanned around for any potential passer-bys, and when she found none, she wasted no time taking off into the air. When we were about a safe 8,000 feet in the air and about 20 miles away from the IHOP, Angel coasted up to me.

"Hey, Daveigh." She started, sounding as though she wanted something.

"Hi, Angel." I replied with a smile.

_"You didn't have to say you didn't want to look for your parents. We'd totally understand."_ She thought, deciding to use a Max-proof form of conversation.

"_Yeah, well, it really doesn't matter." _I tried to sound more cheerful than what I actually was.

_"I don't see what Max's problem is."_ Angel thought in aggrivation after a long pause, of what I assumed was her listening to Max's thoughts. I didn't know what to say that wouldn't sound incredibly stupid. But luckily, Angel continued on before I could reply. _"She keeps on saying horrible stuff about you. It's like, she's mad your going to steal the Flock from her or betray us...or I don't even know. I mean, your nice. I see that, Gazzy, Nudge, and Iggy see that. But her and Fang are just..."_ She trailed off, letting me fill in the blank.

_"Yeah." _I thought finally, unable to think of anything suitable to say. So, instead we fell into a silence and I focused on our surroundings. I was focusing on what looked like a glacial lake when I heard Max's voice. It wasn't too loud, but it was just loud enough for me to hear.

"If Jeb and the other nutjobs loved me, I'm sure they'll go balistic over what's-her-face."

What?

I focused harder, trying to make sense of that sentence for a brief moment before she spoke again. "That, or they'll think she's a complete waste of time, kind of like I am right now."

I felt my jaw clench ever so slightly. I had known Max didn't like me, I had known she didn't want me in the Flock, but this was pushing it. I watched Fang's reaction and it remained impassive, and I felt the urge to follow his example, figuring it'd look more natural to the rest of the Flock anyway if they were to look at me.

"Well, at least one of us can see she's feeding us crap." Her voice quieted so much that I was forced to rely on her lip movements. Fang nodded almost imperceptibly at this statement. I felt Angel shoot me a nervous glance.

"Daveigh, have you ever had a toy or anything?" Angel asked endearingly as she held out a stuffed bear with a tutu and wire halo above it's head.

"Uh, no, I haven't." I replied, studying the dirty bear.

"Oh. Well, this is Celeste. I could let you play with her sometime!"

"That'd be great, Angel." I stated honestly, trying to forget about Max and Fang who were coasting in front of us.

"You've never had a toy?!" Nudge overheard, as she worked her way over to us. I shook my head and her brown eyes widened. "Oh, that's horrible! You need to get one!" She nodded firmly for emphasis. From experiences into cities and towns, I assumed I was probably too old for toys. But common curtesy prevented me from declining Nudge's statement.

"Toys are so great though! I can't believe you've never had any! I mean, I used to have a whole bunch of stuffed animals! I had everything! Giraffes, platypuses...or is it platipi? But anyway, I had polar bears, flamingos..." Nudge continued listing them off for awhile, and again the speed at which she talked was hard to follow, but I somehow managed to catch up on at least half of what she was saying. I smiled and nodded throughout the portions I barely registered, figuring it'd at least make it seem like I was able to comprehend her.

"What happened to them?" I said finally, realizing that she was speaking about these toys in past tense.

"Our house kind of blew up." She shrugged, and cast a glance at the Gasman and Iggy. I followed her glance, and found myself not as surprised about that as I probably should have been.

"Oh, when did that happen?" I asked, curious but still unsure if I wanted to know. But, surprisingly, after that despite how much I wanted to be left alone, Max stopped talking badly about me...or at least lowered her voice enough so I couldn't hear. So, the rest of the flight to a small patch of trees near treeline on a fourteener passed in a peaceful sort of way, aside from the continuous questions and conversations with two thirds of the Flock.

We landed next to the trees upon nightfall, and the Flock clumped together and did their weird stacking hand thing. I watched in curiosity, and despite my better instincts, I kind of wanted to be a part of it. Which made no sense to me, since all I wanted to do was get away from them. So, when once again, Max gave me a look that clearly said "Don't even think about it," I was kind of greatful. She was at least keeping my self-induced isolationism in check. Once they had finished that, the Gasman wasted no time climbing up a nearby pine tree and settling on a sturdy branch. The rest of them gradually followed his lead and shimmied up so that 2 people were on each tree. I hesitated, fighting the urge to just curl up underneath the tree instead, before deciding to climb the tree Angel, Nudge, and Total were on. I picked the lowest branch and reclined so that my back was resting against the trunk. I closed my eyes, and just kind of relaxed. I didn't feel like sleeping, despite how tired I was. I wasn't even close to the comfort level with the Flock to do things without any sort of approval. Including sleep. And I knew with Max around the approval would never come.

"_Goodnight, Daveigh." _Angel thought groggily to me. But it was so silent by this point, I jumped and was forced to shift on the branch so I wouldn't fall off.

_"Good night, Angel."_ I replied. She proceeded to tell me to get some sleep, before she nodded off herself. Instead, I chose to just kind of get lost in my thoughts. I don't know how long I sat there awake, but after a while, I became aware that Max was awake, and I figured she had taken first watch or something. That, or she was going to beat the crap out of me. Which, seemed just as probable.


	9. Chapter 9

**AN: Errr, some Daveigh and Iggy...and a fight scene.**

**Wooooo!**

**...**

**It was driving me nuts, because I knew Iggy had a false identity he used in one of the books called the White something, but I couldn't find it anywhere, so I just kind of guessed and hoped I was right.**

**So, is the White Knight correct, fellow MR fans? **

**If not, please let me know.**

**But other than that, enjoy! :3**

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I was going to wait until the fearless leader fell asleep before doing so myself, figuring that Fang or someone would take the next watch within a couple of hours. But, instead, Max kept casting continuous glares at me all through the night, so that by time the crack of dawn had came, neither of us had gotten an ounce of sleep.

I shifted on the branch, and swung my legs over the branch without making a noise and dropped to the ground just as silently. Max followed me intently with her eyes, scrutinizing every motion. But despite that, I decided that I was going for a fly, and figured that Max wouldn't really care if I left and never came back. In fact, odds were, she'd only care that I was going for a fly if I came back. I rolled my shoulders, walked until I was out of hearing range and took off at a top speed sprint before unfurling my wings and taking off into the crisp morning air.

It felt so unbelievably good to be on my own, without the constant harrassment from the Flock members, that I found myself grinning. I soared over a fourteeners summit, close enough to reach out a hand and touch it before working my wings to propel me straight upwards. When I was about a good 20,000 feet in the air, I divebombed until I was about 10 feet from the ground before pulling myself out of it with smooth precision. I zipped between trees and other geographical features unique to the Rockies before finally slowing down to skid to a halt on a large piece of level land towards the base of a mountain about 20 miles away from where the Flock was. I was about to flop down on the ground and just laugh at the lack of restrictions flying alone offered when I saw someone flying towards me. I frowned and realized that it was Iggy, who must have followed me simply by listening to the sound of my wings beating.

"Uh, Hi?" I greeted, although it was more of a question than anything.

"Max woke us up, and when we saw you weren't there, she said you went for a fly. I think she wanted to follow, but she told one of us to. So you know, we could see if you were selling drugs, or beating up an innocent bystander, you know the usual. So, I, being the most capable, went." He explained as he landed with an incredible grace. He picked at a spot on his pants that he couldn't see, as he waited for me to reply. I evaluated the odds of Max doing that...which initially, seemed pretty low. But, as I thought about it more, she did seem to be pretty stubborn and prideful, so sending someone else out instead of caving and showing the effort to find me herself did seem like something she would do. I realized I probably should have laughed at his statement, so I did. Only it came out probably 30 seconds after he had spoken. He shot me a look that questioned my sanity and I glanced away as I fidgeted with my fingers, feeling my face heat.

"You're a pretty hardcore flyer." He cleared his throat after a long, awkward silence.

"I am?" I replied with a small smile, really not understanding what he meant. To be honest, he seemed like the hardcore flyer after basically following me from a large enough distance, it was almost impossible to hear any noise I may have made. That, and he did it without crashing into a single mountain side. There was just something hardcore about that.

"Yeah, you were cutting it pretty close with some of those ridges you went through, judging by the way I managed to skim a couple of them." He turned slightly and showed me his left wing, which had a couple of the secondary feathers sticking out at unnatural angles.

"Sorry." I gushed, feeling guilty he had to come out here because of me.

"Nah, it's fine. They don't call me the White Knight for nothing!" He boasted, brushing his shoulder non-chalantly.

"Right...well, I'm betting that if I ask who the 'They' are....there wouldn't be a they, would there?" I chuckled. I gave me a look of mock-offense.

"Of course there would be a they! It'd just be rude...so don't ask, and I won't tell." He grumbled, causing me to laugh even more. He laughed too, and when we finally stopped laughing, I crossed my legs and sat down neatly. A look of confusion flitted across his face as he tried to decipher the noise the shuffling of my feet had made, and I realized he didn't know that I had sat down. I instantly jumped up to my feet and grabbed his wrist lightly and led him to a sitting position.

"Sorry about that." I apologized, feeling horrible about being so inconsiderate. But, at the same time part of me was glad he couldn't see, because that meant he couldn't see me be awkward. I got the feeling he _knew_ I was horribly bad at many aspects of life involving other people, but at least he didn't have to see it.

"Don't be. It's cool." He replied, turning to face me with that scary accuracy he possessed. He smiled and I didn't know if he was being honest or not. I didn't know why he had volunteered to go after me...because at least from what I had gathered, Angel and Nudge appeared to be more willing to take that offer. But for some reason, I felt like asking him that would be rude.

"Great..." Iggy muttered suddenly, and I turned to see what he was talking about. Max was gliding towards us with the rest of the Flock following her warily. I glanced at Iggy, surprised that he was so unenthusiastic to see his beloved leader. I mean, it was a given that Max was going to come after me eventually, even though I wasn't running away, and it was also a given that I wasn't going to be enthusiastic to see her and vice versa. But the fact Iggy wasn't thrilled to see her, especially since he had known her his whole life was kind of hard to digest.

I stared at Max as she landed lightly on her feet while tucking in her wings before strolling towards us. She did not look happy, but the more I thought about it, she never did. But, today, she seemed extra unpleasant. She glared at me before glancing back at Iggy.

"Okay, well now that we found you, we can get going." She said in a strained sort of patience and friendliness. But, from the way she stared me down, I knew it was anything but patient or friendly.

"Where we going?" The Gasman asked innoncently, rubbing his eyes with a small fist.

"To get food. Fang, how about you take everyone over to the Cub in the city a couple miles away and I'll meet up with you guys in no time." Fang shot her a look that seemed to question her statement, but it didn't last long before he nodded in wary agreement.

"You heard the woman," He said, and with that wasted no time getting airborne. He used his arms to usher the rest of the Flock upwards. He hovered above us, however as he realized Iggy was still standing next to me. I turned to face him, and again, he was looking straight at me.

"You coming?" He asked, and I remembered how he had been oblivious to Max's anger towards me.

"Uh, yeah. I'll be there in a second. Go ahead." I urged, gently prodding him forwards a few feet. He raised an eyebrow at me before taking off, and after a long while, it was just me and Max standing alone on this godforsaken mountain face. Which, the idea alone made me want to throw myself off the cliff, but I somehow figured that doing so wouldn't help this situation any. I took in a breath and waited for her to say something, not wanting to speak first and make an idiot of myself.

"Listen, I don't know who the hell you are and I don't really care either."

"So why are you talking to me?" I retorted before I could stop myself. Her jaw muscles twitched, and despite my regret at saying that, I felt a pang of satisfaction over the fact I was able to bother her so much.

"Because when you come around and act like a smart ass to me and try to control the Flock, I start to lose my patience." She snapped. That sentence naturally just caused a rush of comebacks that no doubt would have proved her point, but this time common sense took over and I decided it would be best to remain impassive, rather than difficult. And since I couldn't think of anything else to say that wasn't witty, I decided to not say anything at all. And after a long pause, I saw Max begin to clench and unclench her fists. But at long last, I realized she was just waiting for me to say something back. That, or she was baiting me into taking the first hit so as to prove her point to the Flock that I didn't deserve to be here. That thought suddenly enraged me, and I narrowed my eyes at her.

"What the hell is your problem with me?" I demanded, keeping my voice low.

"You didn't hear me? Sorry, I'll try to speak up next time I insult you." I glared at her, feeling every ounce of anger I had managed to brush off towards her in the past couple of days bubble over. But, then I remembered how she was just baiting me, and I decided two could play at that game.

"No, I heard you loud and clear. But you haven't heard what I think of you yet. I mean, it's only fair, right? You're a selfish, arrogant, bitch. You sit there with this high and mighty attitude and boss your Flock around so much I'm surprised they still stick around. And your leading skills suck." Even I knew these insults were pretty petty and wouldn't really anger anyone, but I also knew that they would push Max over the edge. And I was right, with each word I used to describe her, I could see her face grow darker and more furious. We stood in dead silence for maybe a second tops, before she launched herself at me. She feigned a kick to my stomach, that I was about to block before her fist impacted hard against my face. I went sprawling sideways, not focusing on the surprising amount of pain the hit had caused before using the momentum to duck low to the ground and execute a leg sweep as she came rushing towards me. She easily jumped over it, and while she was in the air, I used an arm to balance me as I shot up my left leg to side kick her straight in the stomach.

Her breath left her with a loud wooshing sound and she dropped out of the air. But, it hardly mattered because she rolled into a somersault as she hit the ground and was up on her feet in an instant. I balled my fingers into tight fists and took off at my fastest sprint towards her. Right before I was right in front of her face, I stepped slightly to the side and stuck my arm out to whale her in the neck. She made a gagging noise before grabbing my arm and before I knew what had happened, she had snapped it clean in two. I drew in a breath that came out as more of a hiss of pain as I tried my hardest not to scream. I then used my good arm to wrench my broken one out of her grasp, before leaping backwards as I outstetched my wings just enough to catch some air and send me an extra 10 feet backwards. I let my injured arm dangle loosely at my side as I glared at her for all I was worth. She followed my lead, and before I knew it we were circling each other, sizing each other up. I was sick of her. Sick of her putting me down. Sick of her not trusting me. Sick of her thinking she could control everything. And just like that I was out for blood, and I could tell she was too. I had no clue why she hated me so much, since the reasons she had supplied clearly weren't all of them, but all I knew is that she was just as eager to take me down as I was for her.

And since I was so furious, I was in no mood to play fair. So, I lunged at her, but she beat me to it. She managed to sort of trip me before wrenching my wnigs out from behind me and pulling them together hard. This time I did scream and I swung my non-broken fist around and flailed out kicks, feeling every single one of them impact with her skull and torso. But she still hung on despite my sound beatings to her, and before I knew it she started dragging me towards the edge of the cliff. Which, while normally, it woudn't have been a problem, but with her yanking my wings like this, things wouldn't turn out so well. So, in a burst of fresh anger, I bucked hard and managed to fling her to the ground. Her grasp on my wings stayed strong until she was about an inch from the ground and in effect she managed to yank out a handful of feathers. I shot her a look that was all fury before wasting no time on pinning her to the ground and using my good fist to punch her senseless.

But since she was Max, she didn't take it calmly. While the punching did seem to be effecting her, she managed to twist her way out of the hold and land a chop to the side of my neck. Now it was my turn to gag, and I got the urge to break her arm as well. After all, fair was fair. But now she was up on her feet in a solid fighting stance and I knew she'd be initiating this attack and it would be in my best interest to just block and dodge until I got the perfect opprotunity. I was correct and lightning quick, she directed a roundhouse kick to my chest which I managed to barely avoid by jumping backwards. She continued right into a tornado kick, and when I dodged that, she stepped forward to elbow me in the stomach. I focused intently on the movement before using my good arm to grab her by the crook of the elbow and use her forward momentum to more or less toss her to the side. I took extra care to do so in a way that produced a satisfying snapping sound. She took similar care as to not make a noise, although I could see the visible pain on her face. She scrambled to her feet in an instant and charged at me, before starting a massive barage of hits to my face. At the same time, I tried to block them while getting in some hits of my own.

And then all of a sudden, strong arms were wrapped underneath mine and I was yanked backwards. Instinctively, I flailed about, wincing as I did so, before realizing that it was Iggy holding me down. I stopped struggling as much and scanned around and saw that Fang was restraining a struggling Max as well. Angel, Nudge and the Gasman were gaping at us in shock from a safe distance away and I glanced down at my feet, breathing heavily.

"What the hell are you guys doing?!" Fang shouted, glaring at me as though this whole fight was my fault.

"Just having a pleasant talk." Max replied sarcastically, her voice sounding thick due to a split lip.

"I leave you alone for 5 minutes and you guys beat the snot out of each other?" He was still shouting, and still very clearly blaming me if the look he was shooting me was anything to go by.

"Max started it." Angel blurted suddenly, staring at a rock on the ground. Fang and Max both spun to gape at her, and I felt my face flush. Well, this whole fight probably wouldn't be good in the long run, that was for sure.

"She broke my freaking arm, Angel!" Max shrieked, clearly not taking this fight and Angel's sudden declaration well.

"You broke my arm first!" I snarled back at her, my rage still very evident. I felt Iggy turning to the direction of each person talking before facing me.

"You guys fought so hard you broke each others arms?" He asked, completely shocked. "How did this even start...I'm pretty sure most people don't start out conversations with pounding each other to a pulp."

"Unless your a white coat." Nudge piped up.

"Or an Eraser." Gazzy added. I got the feeling Max might have smiled at them if this was any other fight, but instead she shot them a warning look and they quieted almost instantly.

"Can you let me go? I won't do anything." Max grumbled. It was Fang's turn to shoot her a warning look before reluctantly releasing her. Iggy must have heard him do so, because he released his grip on me too. I cringed and cradled my broken arm, in a way that made me look like I was just crossing my arms.

"You guys are idiots. Now we have to go back to Dr. Martinez's to get your arms set." Fang snapped, his eyes not leaving me.

"It's not my fault!" I told him with a serious look as I held up my good arm. His gaze didn't turn any less suspicious but he fell silent. Everyone was still watching us in disbelief, and I waited for Max to step up and be the leader so we could get out of here or at least move. Max was still shooting me the death look so I looked downwards at the rocky ground.

"Max, both of your arms don't look good. We should probably get going to your mom's." Nudge fretted, scanning our arms.

"Yeah, fine. Let's go." She said after a long pause before taking off into the air without warning. I took in a deep breath, and got the feeling things were only going to get worse from here.


	10. Chapter 10

**AN: Whoa, first update in like 2 months or something like that. Sorry, guys!**

**I've been super busy with Marching Band, work, and karate! :D **

**Plus, I also went through an "I suck at writing" phase...so, I just lost motivation to write for a while. But, now I'm back and I'm falling in love with this story again (not all of the stories that I'm working on...just this one. XD) so, hopefully, there should be more frequent updates. **

**...**

**Um, this is from Max's point of view and that's about all. So, hope you guys enjoy! :3 **

I've broken a lot of bones in my short, bird-kid lifetime. I've also had a lot of fights in said lifetime. But none of the broken bones had been caused by a stranger with wings, and none of the fights had been this meaningful. I wasn't quite sure what the meaning of it was, because ultimately, as much as I hated to admit it, we came out in a draw. Although, the fight did make me hate her even more. So, as we were flying to my mothers house _again,_ I cradled my arm in my good hand and gave her the death look for all I was worth. Fang followed my lead, looking extremely ticked off. Which, I must say, warmed my heart.

The rest of the Flock was silent as we went along, and I guessed they realized I wasn't in a mood to answer questions. Which was an understatement if I had ever heard one.

After a long while, Fang swerved in closer to me and I watched him expectantly, waiting for him to say something witty about my recent Max-induced fight.

"So, working out some issues are we?" He smirked, quoting what I had told him about a century ago when he fought Ari. I scowled and shot out my functioning arm to smack him soundly in the head.

"Shut up." I snapped. He did, but not before shooting me a worried glance and what's-her-face another hateful one. I didn't know what I had expected her fighting skills to be like, but I sure as heck wasn't banking on getting a broken arm in a fight with her. I was trying to focus all my energy into ignoring the pain in my clearly messed up arm, and somehow by hating our so called 'New Flock Member,' the pain was almost completely forgotten. In fact, if I had to choose between advil and hate, hate would win every time.

Now, I'm not a hateful, murderous, psychopathic bird-kid. In fact, I'm pretty much the opposite, as experiences such as not killing my clone, rescuing my would-be killer and half-brother Ari, and not killing another genetically enhanced freak named Omega would suggest. But for reasons that I could and couldn't name, I really hated this random stranger. And our fun little fight had basically just ensured her removal from the Flock. And there would be no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I shot a hard look at Angel with this thought, and her eyes widened as she realized just how serious I was.

But then, since my life is full of fun little twists, I realized that her eyes didn't widen because I was serious, it was because of the gi-freaking-normous army of what looked like the Schools brand new toys. Because, hey, like my life wasn't complete enough with a broken arm and a stranger in our midst!

"Ig, huge army of what looks like robots at 3 o' clock!" I shouted over to him. He nodded once and turned to face them. They were advancing quickly, and I got the feeling this batch wasn't going to be as easy to take down as M-geeks and what not. I reacted without a minutes hesitation and zoomed over to one of them and launched a powerful round-kick that would have snapped a humans neck. But instead of doing anything close to snapping, this robots head did the most creepy thing. Once my foot impacted, it's head simply rotated all the way around until it faced me once more. I mentally cringed before launching into a barage of punches, jabs and kicks, which, let me tell you, isn't so easy with a broken arm. I made a note to myself to hate Daveigh even more for messing with my fighting abilities.

The barages didn't do jack squat to this stupid C3PO, save for maybe a slight drop in altitude. I scowled at it, wanting to cuss at it, but realized that wouldn't exactly do anything. I shot upwards into the air, waiting for it to follow me as I glanced around to check on the Flock. All of them were fighting virtually ineffective battles as well. I cast a furious glance at Daveigh, who was hovering wide eyed in front of several robots, but still fighting with an intensity that only bird-kids getting attacked by things such as robots can have.

"Max!" I heard Gazzy shout as he flung himself over the robots head. It grabbed his ankle and swung him viciously around before tossing him carelessly to the side. I was about to dart over when I saw him pull himself out of the descent and veer around in the opposite direction. "Get away from here!" I didn't need to be told twice. I tucked in my wings and began a plummet downwards. I glanced upwards and saw my flock scatter quickly, realizing what Gazzy was up to. It must have taken a second for Daveigh to register that Gazzy was about to use a massive explosive, because she stared, bewildered for a moment as the flock scattered. However, she looked like she was about to get moving when Iggy shot past her, grabbing her by the arm as he did so, yanking her down with him at a much faster speed than what she probably would have moved at.

It was shortly after he grabbed her that there was a deafening _boom!_ Almost instantly, chunks of robots began pelting me and I tried my best to shield myself from them but despite my efforts was clocked in the leg, wing, and shoulder with what looked like Robo-arms. An experience that is almost as disqusting as it is painful, let me tell you. I made an 'eww' face before snapping out my wings to catch myself a hundred feet above ground and coasted to my left to meet up with my Flock and Stranger. I scanned the sky as I did so and to my relief, I saw no robots. But, as I thought about it, that just meant Iggy and the Gasman were coming up with some pretty scary bombs. Those stinkers.

"Report!" I shouted as I gained altitude.

"M' alright." Nudge slurred slightly through a bloody lip. I also noticed half of her face was swelling already.

"I'm okay." Angel croaked, sounding winded and containing several new gashes on her tiny body.

"That was awesome!" Gazzy exclaimed, shooting downwards to hover next to Nudge. He had burns up his arms, which didn't surprise me. But other than that he looked unscathed.

"You had that bomb in your pockets, and I didn't even know?!" Iggy demanded, sounding awed, jealous, and determined to outdo him all at once. I frowned. The last thing we needed was a Cold War between Iggy and the Gasman. Daveigh looked shaken from the fight, and shell shocked from the Gasman's fun little habit of carrying dangerous explosives. Aside from her broken arm, blossoming black eye, and a large amount of blood dripping down the side of her skull, she seemed unharmed. Iggy must have realized that he was still grasping her forearm and hastily released it, awkwardly shifting towards Gazzy.

"I'm fine." Fang said softly, coasting up behind me. My stomach, which had been in knots before his report eased slightly and I felt myself relax. I turned to face him and took in the sight of him. Out of everyone, he seemed to be the least injured with nothing more than the usual bumps and bruises that come with being attacked. I smiled and without thinking about it, surged forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. His eyes widened in surprise before smirking slightly into the kiss, but before the smirk could fully develop, I surged upwards a couple of feet to hover slightly above the Flock and Stranger.

"Okay, so after being attacked on the way to my mothers, I don't think we should go to said mother's for a couple of days."

"But Max, what about you and Daveigh's arms?" Angel asked with concern as she glanced between the two of us.

"It'll have to wait, I don't want my mother to be put in danger." I replied shortly.

"One day." Fang told me, eyes narrowed. I could tell he knew where I was coming from, bless his mutant soul, but I also knew that he hated the idea of me walking around with a broken arm for too long. Sheesh, boyfriends and their wierd values. I shot him a look that conveyed the message "It doesn't even hurt!" But as I conveyed the look, I realized it wasn't particularly true. Sure, I had broken both of my arms plenty of times and was used to the pain that came with it. And sure, I had gotten great at blocking out most types of pain. But, now that the adrenaline of the fight was wearing off, the pain was slowly resurfacing and it was hurting like heck. I inwardly winced as I looked down at it and noticed that it didn't look like a clean break either, which would explain the higher amount of pain I was feeling in comparison to all my other breaks.

So that was that. My least favorite stranger had officially earned herself a one way ticket out of here.

"_Max!"_ Angel thought to me, sounding pretty angry for someone who had only known the stranger for about a week. "_You can't do this! It's not fair!"_

_"Not fair? Sweetie, if life was fair, we wouldn't be on the run, we wouldn't have been experimented on, and we'd have normal lives." _I replied, but the instant I thought it, I regretted it. Her expression instantly went from anger to one of the saddest expressions I'd ever seen._ "I'm sorry, Angel. I shouldn't have said that. But, the point is, she broke my arm. Fang and I don't trust her, and you know this. I know to you having a new flock member sounds great, but I think that your letting that fact get in the way of everything else."_

_"But Max, you broke her arm first! Your the one that stuck around after we left to start the fight! If you expect us to go by what you said, then I think you should be the one leaving. Because you started everything that you just accused her of." _She glared at me and it was my turn to be taken aback. Me being the articulate person I am, surprisingly couldn't think of anything to say to this. _"She's not leaving, you can't make her."_

_"Angel, you know just as much as I do that she doesn't want to be with us anyway! If I told her she could get her sorry butt out of here, you know she'd be gone."_ It was Angel's turn to be speechless...or in this case, thoughtless. I used this moment of silence to make an announcement to the Flock and stranger who were now staring at us like we were the next best thing since Lost.

"Okay, you guys, we're going to find a place to hunker down for the rest of today and tonight. Stay alert." The majority of the Flock nodded and with that I gave a powerful downstroke to head southwest. Where ever we were going, when we got there, Daveigh would be out of here.

-----

**AN: Eheh, sorry all you who have been waiting patiently for some Daveigh/Iggy stuff...I was more preocupied with some Maximum Ride classic fighting and violence. **

**But, it's coming, I swear! :3 **


	11. Chapter 11

**AN: Hey!**

**Another update...another delayed update. Mah bad. I was going to make this longer and cover more things, but since it's already like 9:15 and the first day of school is tomorrow, I felt I should grace you guys with something. Soooooo, here the something is. The POV starts out with Daveigh and then goes to Max.**

**Enjoy! :3**

I used my shoulder muscles to extend my wings so that they were outstretched to their full length and silently coasted along at an ideal distance from Max. I glanced down at my left arm which was dangling uselessly beneath me. From the looks of it, the bone had a clean break straight through the humerous about 2 inches above the elbow. Which, to my dismay, meant that the whole arm was going to be virtually useless for the next week. I took in a deep breath and tried to surpress my feelings of hostility towards Max. Afterall, the fight was supposed to eliminate our feelings of hatred...or at least bring them down a notch.

"Hey." I heard someone say. I glanced to my right to see Iggy gliding over towards me.

"Hey," I replied through gritted teeth, hoping that I didn't sound angry at him.

"Are you okay?" He asked, gesturing towards my left arm.

"Yeah, it's fine." I said shortly. I knew that if I said too much, I might end up screaming due to the pain.

"What did you even say to her to make her so mad?" He ventured, sounding morbidly curious.

"Nothing much." I grimaced, partially due to the memory of what had been said and partially due to the waves of pain radiating from my arm. I was aware of his sightless eyes focusing at me. I found it kind of unnerving that he had such good accuracy, but before I could contemplate it anymore, Max yelled over the wind.

"That's where we'll be staying." I reluctantly looked to where Max was pointing. It was yet another cave, and I vaguely wondered how she was able to find so many of them. I exhaled thickly and tried not to think about how much I'd rather be back in Manitoba by myself, and angled the tips of my wings downwards to follow the Flock downwards. I tucked in my wings inches before the mouth of the cave and landed lightly on my feet with the Gasman and Iggy following close behind. I didn't bother looking around to see where Max and Fang were located in the cave because I could already feel their icy glares. I took in a subtle but deep breath and tried to calm myself before slinking back against the cave wall out of the Flocks way.

As soon as I did that, Max tore her eyes away from me and turned towards Nudge. "Come here, Nudge, I think I have an icepack somewhere in my bag for the swelling." Nudge nodded and went over to her. Max continued to take care of everyones wounds, and while she did so, I focused my attention elsewhere. I didn't belong here. I was just the awkward add-on that was only here by coincidence. That much was exceedingly obvious by the way Max and Fang acted. In fact, it was even more obvious by the way I was acting. I just wanted to get the hell out of here, and-

"You, we need to have a little chat." Max's harsh voice suddenly cut off my thoughts as she jabbed her thumb towards me. I strove to keep my face neutral and impassive and by the way her eyes narrowed slightly, I figured it must have worked. I also attempted to figure out what this 'chat' was going to be about by her expression. But, it was a steely and vicious as I had always seen it so this 'chat' was up in the air. She pivoted on her heel and took several steps until she was standing on the ledge of the cave. I silently rose to my feet and followed her. The sun was shooting an impressive glare from over the peaks of the surrounding mountains as it set and I was forced to squint to see her better. Out of the corner of my eyes, I was also aware of the Flock cautiously inching towards us.

I waited in a tense silence for her to speak up as we stared each other down. I tried my hardest not to fidget or make any other movements that would make me seem less confident during this time, simply because I refused to give Max that satisfaction. At long last, she finally spoke up however.

"I don't know how to say this nicely, and I'm not going to bother to try to sugar coat it. Get your sorry butt away from my Flock." Her voice was low and deadly, making the threat in the sentence perfectly clear. However, to me, the threat didn't matter. I hadn't expected her to say that in our 'chat', in fact, I was sure it would be another fight or something. This was my ticket to freedom, and while I heard Nudge, the Gasman and Iggy gasp, I couldn't find an ounce of sorrow at this announcement. I bit back a smile and simply nodded. I didn't bother glancing back at the Flock, recognizing that if I did so, I might feel something towards them. And whatever that something might have been, I didn't want to find out. So, without further adieu, I turned and pitched myself of the ledge. I unfurled my wings after I had fallen about 50 feet and gave a powerful downstroke to propel me as far away from the cave as possible.

****

As soon as I saw her hurl herself of the mountain face, I turned around to head back into the cave. I knew she wasn't coming back and therefore, there was no need to watch her fly away. But, because karma's a big, fat, ugly witch, the rest of the Flock wasn't reacting as well as I was. In fact, they were all standing on the ledge, staring intently on the speck that was rapidly moving away from us in the sky. Since I love my Flock more than anything in the world, I fought the urge to roll my eyes and decided that they needed a distraction. I moved to make some food for them when I stopped abruptly as my Voice randomly appeared.

_"Maximum, was that really necessary?"_ Although Jeb chose to keep the voice monotonous and impossible for emotions to leak through, I could have sworn I heard disappointment somewhere in that statement.

"_I don't know what your talking about Voice." _I replied flatly, as I continued to unzip my backpack.

"_The Flock seemed to like her..." _The Voice trailed off. Again with the stupid statements from the annoying Voice in my head.

"_If you're trying to tell me something important, spit it out, Voice. If not, then just shut up." _But whether or not the voice had something else important to say, I didn't get to find out because Nudge shouldered past me at that moment.

"I can't believe she's gone." She muttered, curling up in the far corner of the cave. Gazzy followed her lead and kneeled down next to her, close enough so that his arm touched hers comfortingly.

"Who want's something to eat?" I offered, hoping that the thought would successfully distract them from the removal of what's-her-face.

"I'm not hungry." Angel snapped, stepping past me to create as much distance between us that the cave would physically allow. Sheesh, some people just got too attatched to things, I found myself thinking. Which, less then a millisecond later, I regretted due to the fact Angel spun around and gave me one of the scariest looks I've ever seen her produce. I mentally smacked myself and turned to face the rest of Fang, feeling desperate for some sort of support.

"It's getting late. I'm going to bed." He said levelly. I raised an eyebrow at him, not understanding how the heck that was supposed to help me. But before he could reply, Nudge spoke up.

"Yeah, I'm tired. Sleep sounds really good right about now." I then knew what Fang was getting at. Sleep was a way for the Flock to not talk to me, which seemed to be appealing to all of them. I masaged my temples and leaned back against the cave wall. If having a flock of mutant bird kids wasn't a stress inducer, I didn't know what else could be classified as one.

"Yeah, maybe sleep is what we all need." I seconded, glancing at Angel who turned her back on me as I did so. "I'll take first watch and the rest of you catch some z's."

"I'll take second watch," Iggy spoke up for the first time since what's-her-face's departure. I made a noise of approval and watched him stretch out a couple feet away from Gazzy. I stood there for a few seconds just watching the 4 of them lay there, feeling a horrible stab of affection towards them. Which, yes, I was still capable of doing even if they wanted nothing more than for me to die in a fiery explosion.

I was so lost in thought as I watched them that I actually jumped a bit when Fang's hand laced through mine. I felt my face heat and I turned to face him, not speaking knowing anything that I could say would be heard by the other four. But, luckily for us, the years we had spent together had made us experts in communicating just through looks. For example, he shot me a look that clearly said "I agree with what you did 110 percent, but things are pretty much screwed right now."

Amen to that.

The corner of his mouth twitched slightly and I knew he must have been able to read my expression perfectly. Which was good, because I didn't even want to think about this anymore, due to the fact my thoughts were the farthest thing from private. So with that, I heaved a sigh and sat down, gently tugging Fang down with me. And, after that, I did a very un-Max action. I tilted my head downwards to rest it on one of his wiry shoulders. I may not have liked the fact that I, Maximum Ride, was succumbing to such a girly, adolescent human action, but it just felt so right that I just didn't care as much as I would have, say 3 months ago. In fact, when Fang slid his arm protectively around my shoulders, I decided that I just didn't care at all.

It was times like these, where I could just relax and forget about the freakishly large list of problems in our lives. I smiled like a moron to myself, and fell into an alert, but peaceful sleep.

Sometime later, I felt the rays of sunlight against my eyelids, and I smiled slightly at the rare night of relaxation. I mean, despite my broken arm which I had officially lost feeling in, I was in a pretty good mood. Which was saying something. I was about to grab for my backpack when suddenly-

"Iggy's gone!" Nudge shrieked. My eyes snapped open and my previously good mood disappeared.

****


	12. Chapter 12

**AN: Whoa, first update in ages.**

**Sorry about that. D:**

**But, I stopped doing my homework to work on this, so....that's saying something right? XD**

**...**

**Um, this starts out as Daveigh's perspective, then it goes to Iggy's, and back to Daveigh's. The fight scene was fun to write and all, but lemme tell you guy's, I'm way more excited for everything that comes after this. So, I hope you guys are too. :D**

**Soooo, enjoy the chapter! :3**

**-----**

I let out a small laugh as the cool night breeze rustled my feathers as I coasted on a jet stream. I was free! Free from a lifestyle I hated, free from irritating and awkward social interactions, and most importantly, free from Max. I felt my grin widen at this thought and I lazily tilted my shoulder downwards to roll me over onto my back.

Freedom had never felt this amazing!

I figured that I had never truly appreciated my solitude and freedom until I lost it. But now that I had it back, I was vowing never to lose it again. I rolled back over onto my stomach and scanned ahead as I mentally calculated how far away from the Flock I'd have to be in order to never be located by them again. I knew I'd have to keep on the move, similar to what I had done before. I also knew that just plain 'keeping on the move' wouldn't ensure my privacy now that the Flock knew I existed. My smile drooped to a slight frown as I wondered where they would be least likely to be. Knowing them, they'd head for somewhere remote, maybe not as remote as say, the forest I had been living in prior to my discovery, but I still didn't want to take chances.

I suddenly realized that in order to not be located by the Flock, my best bet would be to simply blend into the crowds. I decided then and there I wouldn't go to a big city, but maybe take refuge in some park in a suburb. I nodded once to myself to affirm this idea, before using my shoulder and chest muscles to propel my wings into a powerful downstroke that caused me to surge forward with a burst of speed.

I was free!

----

Okay, so I admit, deciding to chase after a girl I can't see probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. I also admit that chasing after a girl I can't see a good 4 hours after she left was also incredibly idiotic. Now, I was flying South-East based completely on the direction I had heard her take off in. Yep, I was pretty much an idiot. I mean, I was obviously smarter than most blind people by the fact that I could easily find my way back to the cave from here. Not that I had any intention of returning at the moment. I was also way smarter than Max, because kicking Daveigh out was pretty much the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. And thus, it was an idea that I would never have thought of, let alone wanted to do.

I wanted to be able to say I was smarter than Fang, but as I thought about it, he had done plenty of stupid things because of Max. And, being that he wasn't blind, I'd say that my stupid action because of a girl made me just as bad as him. So, although I didn't particularly want to admit it, me and Fang were officially on the same boat. Or on the same band of hormonal, messed up, love-struck teenage bird-kids.

Trust me, becoming like Fang and allowing my higher-than-your-average-mutant intellect slip away because of a girl was something I never wanted to do. Ever.

I scowled down at the ground I couldn't see as I lifted my wings to catch the slipstream. What was I thinking? This was so stupid! I mean, even though I wasn't lost, I sure as heck didn't know where I was going. I couldn't land and try to search the land, because then I'd just lose the tiny trail I had on her. The idiotic side of me wanted to pick up my pace by a good 50 miles per hour, but the smarter-than-Max side of me knew that by doing that, I'd end up going so fast that it would be virtually impossible to notice small details that could potentially get me or Daveigh killed.

Which one to choose?

----

Dawn was breaking almost directly ahead of me and that was when it hit me that I had been awake for 48 hours and hadn't ate anything in almost 24 of those hours.. So, needless to say, the sunrise was slightly less magnificent as I struggled to keep myself awake and airborne. And to think, 2 weeks ago I would have been just waking up, been fully rested, getting something to eat, and most importantly, not trying to escape from the Flock. How quickly things change.

I knew that I was only about 400 miles away from where I had left the Flock and that wasn't nearly enough distance for me to stop yet. If I stopped now, they'd be just starting to leave which meant that depending on how long I ended up resting, they could essentially catch up with me by about 2 o' clock. Which was a scary thought in itself. Almost as scary as the fact that I was steadily dropping altitude as my wings slowly got heavier and heavier. I jolted my head up as I realized I had dipped another 5 feet and quickly decided to do sonething to distract me from my exhaustion. I reached out my good arm and pinched my broken one as hard as I could.

Instead of feeling a flash of white hot pain like I had been expecting, I didn't feel a thing. Despite my extreme fatigue, my eyes shot wide open at this. I examined my arm. It was still bent at an unnatural angle and dangling as uselessly as it had been before, but other than that, I saw no other visible deformities. And since I didn't know anything about medicine, I didn't know if the lack of change was good or bad. I cussed under my breath and forced my shoulder and chest muscles to lift my wings for another stroke. And another. And by the third one, my wings barely made it past half of their frange of mobility and I dropped a good 10 feet. I barely had the energy to release another stream of swear words as I tried tried to propel myself upwards to catch some sort of jet stream. By the time I managed to heave myself up high enough to catch the stream, I was out of breath and my eyes were resisting the simple act of opening. I tried opening them as wide as I could and stop blinking, but when the wind is flying directly at your face, it's a feat that's near impossible.

I kept on snapping in and out of focus as I coasted, trying to prevent myself from falling asleep. And the only thing that was enabling me to snap back into focus was the concept that the Flock could be following me. Which, started to lose effectiveness within ten minutes of sheer exhaustion. I sucked in a deep breath and felt my stomach churn with a hunger that was unreal. I had never flown for 7 hours straight without stopping to eat. So, by flying for seven hours straight, without stopping to eat, _and_ running on the calories I had consumed almost 24 hours prior, I figured I was going to drop like a brick pretty soon. But the question was, how much longer could I push myself until I dropped like a brick?

I angled the tips of my wings in a way to catch the stream better as it veered slightly right, and felt myself dimly realizing that I was slipping into a sleeplike state yet again. I forced myself to open my eyes with as much snap as I could muster, but my eyelids felt like they weighed a ton and the return to focus was much slower and shortlived than I had been expecting.

Well...maybe as long as I'm coasting, I could afford a couple minutes of rest....I vaguely heard myself think. I allowed myself to let my eyes close for just a minute or two, when all of a sudden, there was a burst of searing hot pain directly below my ribs. I let out a small scream as the pain registered and my wings crumpled, causing me to hurtle out of the jet stream almost instantaneously. My eyes snapped open and all of a sudden, adrenaline was rushing through my veins as I lost rapidly lost altitude. I tried desperately to extend my wings again, but the pain that had been centralized around my ribs was spreading to my extremities and I realized I couldn't control my muscles correctly. What was this? I scanned as much as I could see without being able to turn my head to try to locate the cause of this, feeling a sense of panic rising.

I desperately tried once again to extend my wings, yet they did nothing more than twitch pathetically. I was falling so quickly that I knew if I didn't do something fast, I would be impacting the ground very shortly. I tried to flail myself around to see where I was in the air when suddenly, my neck was grabbed by a large, calloused hand and my descent came to an abrupt halt. I gagged and wheezed as the grip effectively managed to block my airway, and found myself staring into the face of a rugged looking man. He was somehow managing to stay airborne, although I couldn't see any visible wings and his eyes were filled with a look of manic satisfaction as he sneered at me.

"Wel, well, well. Looks like catching you wasn't even worth the trouble of tasing you. Seems like you would have fallen out of the sky at any minute anyway." He boasted. I felt my eyes narrow at him and I began struggling against the grip, noticing that my muscles were slowly returning to normal.

"That's not going to do any good, freak." He warned, eyeing me with a look of amusement as I struggled. I was getting light headed due to his grasp, so instinctively I shot up my good hand, grabbed his wrist and thanks to the large amounts of adrenaline coursing through my veins, bent it backwards until I heard a satisfying snap. He howled in pain and dropped me as though I were on fire. I snapped out my wings as quick as I could while my muscles were still recovering and managed to shoot myself backwards about 20 feet. I hovered there, sucking in lungfulls of air figuring I'd have about 10 seconds before he would rush at me again.

"Oh, you think your so tough, don't you?" He growled as his face took on an even more derranged expression. I said nothing and watched as he rose to his full height and zoomed towards me. As he did so, I noticed he did have wings. Two sets to be precise. They were just thin, nearly transparent, and beating at such a quick pace they were virtually invisible to the naked eye. Kind of like the wings of a fly...or more accurately, a dragon fly. My brow furrowed at this, before I ducked at the last minute round kick him to the chest with as much force as I could possibly muster. Aside from a slight release of breath from him, the kick didn't do a single thing. He let out a deep, booming laugh and lunged to grab my ankle. I just barely dodged the grab and tucked in my wings to drop a good 30 feet before zooming back up to meet him. I feigned a punch to his face before sending a powerful tornado kick to his jaw. He was knocked sideways, but bounced back in an instant. I darted in to do another barage, shifting my to attack him from all angles so that nothing was too predictable. He managed to block all of them, and I realized that my exhaustion was starting to kick in again and he was purposely trying to tire me out.

Upon this thought, I shot myself upwards until I felt him following me. I then let myself fall into a powerful drop kick to the man's shoulder. I felt something snap as my foot impacted, but instead of him dropping out of the sky like I had been hoping, this time he actually did succeed in catching my ankle. The next thing I knew, I had been flipped upside down, my wings still flapping desperately to free myself.

"You've managed to piss me off, Freak. You're going to pay for that." He snarled. He was about to raise a fist to, more than likely beat the snot out of me when all of a sudden, he went careening sideways as someone barreled into him from the left. The man's grasp instantly sprung from my ankle and I dipped awkwardly for a moment as I regained my balance. I then spun around to gape at who had just tackled my attacker.

Iggy was zooming towards me with the man close behind him. Despite the extreme humorlessness of the current situation, he had a grin plastered to his face. I opened and closed my mouth before deciding to help him and ask questions later. As he passed me, I waited for the man to follow and delivered a swift uppercut to the man's groin. He doubled over and his wings stopped beating, causing him to lose a dangerous amount of altitude. I was about to dive after him to beat the crap out of him, like he would have done to me when I realized that it was no longer just him we needed to worry about. I heard the sound of multiple helicopters closing in on us and I felt my sense of panic rise.

"Do you have any type of explosive on you?" I asked Iggy, my voice a good 5 notches higher than normal. I couldn't believe in the two weeks I had known him, I would become so used to his pyromania, I was already dependent on it in fights. He raised an eyebrow at me with a small quirk of his lips as if to say "I always have explosives." I realized it was a stupid question, and might have laughed any other time, but instead I simply nodded, took the hint, and flew as far away from there as I could. Less than 20 seconds later, I heard a series of massive explosions as the fire from the first of Iggy's bombs managed to explode the remaining 3 helicopters. I had to admit, that was impressive even for him. I zoomed upwards to meet him once the smoke had cleared enough for me to locate him. His face was now serious and I knew then and there that he was out of explosives. I inwardly cussed, and looked around, seeing another group of choppers followed by an army of the dragonfly guys coming towards us. Was this seriously what the Flock had to go through almost every single day?

I took in a deep breath and realized that I couldn't escape these guys, they were everywhere. So, that just left fighting, which was just as unappealing considering our odds.

"This sounds really bad." Iggy muttered, his body tensing.

"We're going to have to fight." I muttered back. I glanced at him in time to see him nod once. Once I saw the action, I wasted no time in speeding up to the nearest cluster of men similar to the one I had fought earlier. I dove straight at one, before swerving to the left at the last minute to deliver a powerful side kick to the one directly next to it. It staggered slightly before clumsily lunging towards me. I shot upwards and out of the way, watching two of them collide headfirst. I might of got a kick out of this any other time, but today, I just watched with grim sense of satisfaction before diving downwards to lash out at the next one. I used my good arm to get some punches and jabs in and was about to progress into a complex series of hits when I was clubbed over the head by one of the other winged-man's fist so hard that my vision blurred. I dropped dangerously and dazedly forced myself to keep beating my wings. I made my way back up to them and knew that the blow to the head had made me too uncoordinated to do much damage with hits and kicks anymore, so instead, I pushed my luck and latched on to the nearest one's right set of wings.

It let out a high pitched keening sound and lost altitude. I pondered this briefly before yanking as hard as I could to rip the wing clean from the guy's back. He screamed louder this time and I let go as he dropped to the ground. I used another downstroke to propel me towards the remaining men from the original cluster. I shot past them before backing up to launch two rapid reverse side kicks at them. It had little to no effect and I deduced that I was either so tired, my attacks were weak and clumsy or that these things were stronger than they looked. Or maybe it was both. I spun around to punch them, but unfortunately, they were ready for this and I got punched in the face instead. Hard. I felt my nose break upon contact and a tooth knocked loose. I went reeling backwards from the hit, but before I could actually fall, the man grabbed me by my broken arm and yanked me towards him. I screamed at this, realizing that this action had certainly brought feeling back to the appendage. In fact, the action had slid the broken bone so much that it tore straight through my skin so that the white of the bone was potruding a good inch out of my actual skin. However, my scream was short lived as the man pulled out a taser and jabbed me in the gut. I hissed in a breath of pain and doubled over, trying not to puke. The man tased me once more in the same spot, allowing me to finally drift into a not unwelcome unconciousness.

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	13. Chapter 13

**AN: Whoa, I don't even know how long it's been since I've last updated. Sorry about that. D:**

**I was working on National Novel Writing Month, which was quite an adventure. I didn't finish it, because I'm too scatterbrained for that, but, I did get pretty far. And thus, with all my concentration on that, Times Like These kind of got kicked to the curb. But now I'm back...and I'll try to alternate now between my novel and Times Like These. **

**This is from Daveigh's point of view. There's 2 or 3 h-words...so there's your warning. But other than that, enjoy! :3  
**

* * *

Cold tile was pressing against my face, which was a key indicator that something I was no longer anywhere I was familiar with. Instinctively, I remained perfectly still and forced myself to calmly take in what I could without opening my eyes. Years of experience from living in the wilderness had caused me to realize just how important it is to use your senses to determine what's going on when you are either terrified, trapped, or lost. And, the more I thought about it, this was probably a situation that involved all three of those things. Inwardly, I released a couple of swear words, before concentrating hard on the factors I could take in with my senses.

The air possessed a pungent aroma that almost seemed familiar. There were noises coming from all around me, some subdued and some anything but subdued. The quieter and more consistent noises, were things such as an air conditioner whirring and muted voices. The voices sounded far away and muffled, so I assumed they were in some different area of the building I assumed myself to be in. However, the other noises, were far more alarming. I heard someone or something whimper and moan from somewhere near by. I also heard rattling and jarring from slightly farther away. But what tipped me off the most to the fact that this place, wherever and whatever it was, was not one with good intentions, was the sound of a high pitched scream. I tensed at this, trying to figure out where it was coming from. It didn't sound nearly as close as the whimpering and rattling, but it also didn't sound as distant as the muffled voices.

Where the hell was I?

I squeezed my eyes tighter together for a brief moment, bracing myself for whatever I would see, before slowly peeling them open. The first thing that came into my field of vision, was bars. I felt my eyes widen as I fought against a rising wave of panic. I hastily scrambled to a sitting position, and hit my head against something metal. I massaged my head slightly with my right arm, wincing as I did so. My whole head ached and there was a large goose egg directly on the crown of my skull. I then remembered that my left arm had been broken when I came here, and I hastily moved to glance at it. To my surprise, it had been covered with the plaster of a beige cast. But none of those things hardly mattered, because it instantly dawned on me that I was in a cage. A cage?!

My panic surged more and I rapidly scanned around, realizing that this cage was maybe a 4 by 4 max. The action of looking around caused my head to spin, and I forced myself to suck in controlled breaths to calm myself. It hardly worked, but at least I didn't have the urge to move around excessively anymore.

"I take it your awake?" I heard Iggy's voice from behind me. I rapidly spun around, forgetting any sense of calm I may have had prior. My head throbbed once more, but I ignored it as I saw Iggy sitting in a cage just as small as mine. He was leaning against one of the walls, head ducked to avoid hitting it on the cieling of the cage. His knees were drawn up in an awkward position, considering his legs were far to long to comfortably fit inside of the cage no matter how hard he tried. I felt my eyes open even wider in total shock.

"Iggy?!" I shrieked. But instead of having the piercing tone I would have expected, my voice came out in a hoarse croak. He gave me a weak attempt of a grin, but it didn't fool me. The physical appearance of his face was littered with bruises, and dark circles were present underneath his eyes. His underlying expression behind his grin was every bit as grave and exhausted as the markings on his face.

"Yo." He replied. I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes, trying to remember exactly what had happened. I remembered me leaving the flock, getting extremely tired, and then getting tased and attacked by a dragon-fly thing, and then...Iggy had come. There was explosives, and then we had to fight. I got hit in the head extremely hard and tased once more after fighting another dragon-fly thing, and from there I didn't remember anything. Which meant, at some point after I lost consciousness, I had been dragged to wherever we were now, and Iggy had been as well. I tensed, suddenly feeling overwhelmingly guilty.

"I'm so sorry!" I croaked once again. His expression altered quickly to confusion.

"Why?"

"You got captured because-"

"I got just as sick of Max as you did. It's not your fault, so don't even worry about it." He cut me off, startling me. I had no clue he was that frustrated with her too. She must have done something to really tick him off in the time after I left. "Besides, it's not like it's the first time I've been captured and brought to a place like this." He added, trying to sound calm. He would have succeeded if I hadn't seen him fidget with the hem of his pant leg upon saying this.

I sighed thickly, and began looking around once more. We were in a dimly-lit room, with tile floors and high, impenetrable walls. There were absolutely no windows, and I got the impression we were deep underneath the actual building. The whole room was laid out similar to that of a library, with rows and rows of cages. There were hundreds of them, many of them stacked on top of one another. I frowned and peered out of my cage on the other side of me, where I saw a sleeping child who had a sickly blue tinge to his skin. I was about to look away when I realized that there was another blue body laying next to him. I stared harder, and saw that it wasn't a body at all, it was his old skin, showing that he had molted just like a snake. I turned away from the cage and closed my eyes, trying to eliminate what I had just seen.

If all these cages contained people like that boy, it certainly explained the whimpers I had heard. It also explained the rattling of people trying to get out of their cages. But, as I thought about it, I wanted to know where the scream had come from. What had made the person scream? Who were the people talking in some other area of the building? I opened my eyes, and looked at Iggy. He was facing me with an expression of a sad sort of empathy.

"That poor child..." I muttered. Iggy turned to the direction I had been facing before.

"Is that the one that shed it's skin?" He asked. I nodded once, and realized he couldn't see it before muttering a feeble "yes."

"The white-coats were talking about it a couple of hours ago. They were so proud, or some other freaky scientist emotion." I cringed at the thought of anyone feeling proud about a blue child shedding it's skin.

"He's actually pretty lucky compared to some of the other people in here." He continued, his voice low. I blinked at him before looking across from us where I found the source of the whimpering I had heard earlier. It was an adolescent whose organs had been altered so that all of them, except for it's brain, were on the outside of it's body. I wondered how it was still alive, but as I watched it whimper and shudder, I saw it's heart beat begin to slow down. I drew my legs up to my chest and hugged them tightly, looking away as quickly as I could.

"It's horrible, what they do to people. Those nut-jobs are sick." Iggy spat bitterly.

"Nut-jobs as in scientists." I said slowly. He nodded once and turned his head so that his gaze would have been meeting mine, had he been able to see. I still couldn't get over his unnerving accuracy. "They were the ones who made you...blind?" I said, rather awkwardly as I failed to find a decent way to phrase it. His face darkened but he nodded once more. I bit my lip slightly, recognizing that it was the 'white-coats' who made the dragon-fly things, the ones who made the hundreds of people around us how they are now, and as much as I hated to admit it, they were the ones who had made my who I was. Even if I didn't remember ever dealing with them before.

I found myself begin to shiver slightly at this thought. Generally, in my lone existence, I was able to forget that having wings was something abnormal, and thus I had no trouble forgetting to wonder about my past or how I had gotten the wings in the first place. But now that I was in a place that I quite possibly could have spent the first seven years of my life at, there was no ignoring those questions. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn't want to know. I had heard about all the disappointment the Flock went through in regards to their parents and past, and I didn't want to join their ranks. I just wanted to get out of here as soon as possible, before I ended up meeting the same fate of whimpering boy, who I noticed with a dim sense of sorrow, had stopped whimpering.

"Are you okay?" Iggy asked suddenly, leaning towards my direction in his cage. I found this kind of a stupid question, considering we were in a scientific lab surrounded by other experiments that had gone horribly wrong, I had no clue what was going to happen, and I still had no recollection of my past. I figured it wasn't even worth lying about.

"Nah, but okay's a boring standard anyway." I told him with a slight laugh to show that I was aiming for a comedic affect. He contemplated this for a brief moment before chuckling slightly.

"I like the way you think." He laughed some more, but stopped abruptly, holding up a hand as he leaned to his left to listen to something I hadn't heard yet. I tensed and waited until I too heard what he had heard. Footsteps. They were making a brisk advance towards our direction and I grew progressively more tense as I did so. After about 10 agonizing seconds, the owners of the footsteps finally rounded the corner and came into view. I saw Iggy return back to a disinterested state from the corner of my eyes. I followed his lead, curling into a ball and pretending to sleep, figuring that they must not stop to notice those that don't make themselves noticeable.

"Is this the one you brought in yesterday?" A males voice asked, as both pairs of footsteps came to a halt directly in front of my cage.

"Yeah, it's definitely one of the bird kids." Another male voice replied, slightly deeper than the first.

"We've brought them here before, why's the director so interest in these two?"

"I thought he was only interested in that one. The other one just kind of came with." I cringed at this statement.

"Well, I suppose we better hurry and get it to him before we get in trouble." The deeper voiced guy grunted, and the next thing I knew, my cage had been grabbed and hoisted over his shoulder. The sudden action caused me to slam face first into the bars of the cage and I bit back a scream of pain.

"Are you sure it's even alive? It seems pretty quiet." The first guy asked. Suddenly, my cage was lowered to the first guys eye level, and I was face to face with a dark skinned man. He raised an eyebrow as he looked at me.

"Oi, you alive?" He then reached in two fingers, in what I assumed was an attempt to check my pulse. However, I didn't wait long enough to find out, because I shot out an arm and grabbed the fingers before squeezing them with all the strength I could muster and snapping them clean in two. He let out a roar of pain and fury, and the next thing I knew, my cage was dropped to the floor, which caused another jarring face plant, this time to the bottom of the cage. I swore out loud this time, but my lip was bleeding so it came out as an unintelligible slur instead. The man whose fingers I had just broken began raging up a storm and kicked my cage, flipping me over onto my back.

"Knock it off. Do you know how mad he'll be if it's unconscious when we bring it to him?" The other man snapped, picking up my cage, carefully avoiding sticking any of his appendages inside of the bars.

"Yeah, I suppose your right. Well, he'll probably do a lot worse to this thing than what I could do right now anyway." The dark-skinned man relented with a hint of satisfaction. I glared at both of them, trying to keep myself angry and not terrified, but as they began walking down the hall, it simply didn't work. I scrambled around to look at Iggy desperately. He was pressing himself against the bars of his cage, directly facing me. His expression was a cross between furious, reassuring, and terrified at the same time. I gulped and closed my eyes. Who the hell was I being taken to? Part of me wanted to know, but the more logical side of me got the feeling I wouldn't want to stick around to find out.

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	14. Chapter 14

**AN: Long time no update, huh?**

**Heheh, sorry about that. D:**

**But, the point is, here's a chapter and I'm on a roll with writing this, because I just read the second mangaish thing of Maximum Ride and it rekindled my love for it. First part = Max, second part = Daveigh, Third part = Max. **

**Yep, that's pretty much it. Enjoy! :3**

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I had already lost Iggy once before. Remember the painful descriptions of me feeling like my heart had been torn out and stamped on by a pair of cleats? Yeah, that was when he had found his parents and had left the Flock for a couple of weeks. Not fun. But when that had happened, I at least had some recognition of the fact he would be leaving. But this time I had absolutely none.

So believe me when I say that waking up to an announcement from Nudge that Iggy is gone, was not my idea of a party.

"Angel, sweetie, did you hear his thoughts at all last night?" I tried, hoping we could have some sort of lead on Iggy's departure. She shook her head and absently hugged Celeste closer to her chest. I paced around, trying to think of any possible place he could have gone. The way I saw it, there were only two ways he would ever have left. Well, actually three, but one of them had already been done. See reference to Iggy's finding of parents above. The first, was that he had been taken at night by the Lab's latest mutant toys, which, in our world, was highly probable. And the second, was that he left on his own free will, which didn't make any sense, because I knew for a fact that Iggy loved the Flock with all his heart.

"Do you think the White-coats took him?" Gazzy asked anxiously.

"It's very likely." I replied teresly, not breaking my stride. "And if they did, the first thing we have to do is figure out where their new location is, because we can count on the fact that it's not where it used to be." This statement was met with nods, and I turned to Fang.

"Do you think we'd be able to find any information about it on there?" I asked, nodding to the laptop in his hands.

"I should be able to, yeah."

"I'll help you hack into something!" Nudge exclaimed, heading over to Fang. I nodded once to myself as I continued pacing. The more I thought about it, I grew more and more convinced that Iggy had by some unexplained reason, ended up in the School. It had to be, there was no other-

"Max, I think he's there too." Angel's soft voice echoed through my head. I smiled and ruffled her hair, before heading over to Gazzy. I placed my hands on his shoulder and knelt down to his eye level. He was my little trooper, even now, when his partner in crime wasn't at his side.

"We're going to find him or he's going to find us. One of the two. I can just feel it." I told him. He put on a determined expression and nodded fiercly. I gave his shoulders a squeeze, before heading over to Fang, peering over his shoulder to watch the screen anxiously. They were still working hard, but I didn't see anything promising. What if we couldn't find any leads on the School on the internet? I needed to think of something faster.

I then remembered how we had been on our way to my mom's before we found out Iggy was absent, and that my mother was unfortunately on good terms with Jeb. Therefore, she would have some knowledge regarding the school or other Jeb-related topics. Instantly, I put a hand on Fang's shoulder. He looked up at me, his expression not nearly as impassive as it normally is.

"My mom. She might know about the School's location." I told him. He glanced at my broken arm quickly before closing the laptop and rising to his feet.

"Yeah. She might. She'll also be able to fix your arm." He said seriously. I refrained from rolling my eyes. He shot me a look that clearly said "Your getting your arm fixed, and we're finding Iggy. Period."

"Guys, we're going to Ms. Martinez's." He spoke up to the rest of the Flock. I grabbed his hand and nodded once to affirm that statement.

"We're going to find Iggy." I repeated firmly and confidently. All while trying to block out the inevitable thought of "_What if we don't?"_

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As my crate was tossed to the ground, I caught a glimpse of the room I was in, and realized I was in the room where the adult voices had been coming from earlier. I rubbed my already throbbing skull and tried to blink away the dark spots blinking in my vision, before warily sitting up as much as I could in the small metal cage. The room, like the area I had been taken from had no windows what so ever. There were multiple computers lining the walls with people in white coats standing in front of them. But the thing that really stood out was the pair of legs that stood directly in front of my cage. I focused on remaining aloof, hoping that I was succeeding.

"We brought you the one you asked for, boss. But, don't waste your time with this one. I think your better off just killing it." The man whose finger I had bit said, in a tone that was not surprsingly, bitter. There was a slight silence before another man's voice spoke up. It was rich and might have been comforting, if I wasn't in a crate.

"I'm not killing her. Set the crate down, and let me get a look at her." I glanced at the man who was holding my crate, and I could tell he was debating on whether or not he should just drop me, but apparently thought better of it and placed me on the floor gingerly. My natural instincts told me to back the heck away from this new man, and I gladly obliged. However, my movement backwards didn't seem to phase him as he leaned down to peer through the bars.

He had brown hair that was beginning to get a faint grey tinge to it, and a trace amount of stubble across his jaw. His eyes had crinkles around them, but I wouldn't have been able to say if they were from laughter or something less pleasant for the life of me.

"Hello, there," He stated in a way that's generally reserved for close friends, from what I've managed to observe. I chose to remain impassive and wait for him to continue on. "It's been a long time. I didn't forget about you though, I promise." He continued smiling at me, but at these words I frowned just a tiny bit. However, I didn't trust myself to say anything. He studied my face long and hard as his smile finally fell a bit. I looked him right back, choosing to try to intimidate him with a silent approach, despite the horrendus amount of fear I was feeling.

"You got away, and all information about you stopped making sense with your location virtually unknown." He sighed. "You've grown up quite a bit since then." At these words, I felt my jaw clench. Whether it was in anger, fear, or a sheer refusal to talk, the effect didn't go unnoticed.

"Tell me, Daveigh, how have these last seven years treated you?' I wanted to scream "What the hell are you talking about? Shut up! And who are you?" and I probably would have as well if it wasn't for the second man deciding to speak up.

"Boss, I know you want to speak with it, but we got the tech's waiting back there and they're determined to do these experiments."

"Yes, I understand. I merely have one more question." He replied, holding up a hand. He then returned his attention back to me and I fought the urge to flinch. "Daveigh, let me ask you this, what do you remember?" Again, I didn't reply, and I saw the briefest flash of anger flit across his expression, but just as quickly as it arrived, it vanished. "Very well, take her away." And before I could fully realize what was happening, my crate was roughly grabbed and I did several ricochets against the metal bars as I was lifted up.

I'd like to say that I passed out then and there, but that would be a horrible and blatant lie. Instead of passing out, I by some twist of fate managed to stay conscious, which meant as I was carried, I saw exactly where we went. The man shoved open the set of double doors we came in through, and headed down a long and dimly lit hall. There were absolutely no windows, which effectively managed to give the place a thoroughly terrifying aura. He kept walking until we came up to another set of doors, and when we walked thruogh these, the incoming amount of light made me cringe and rub my eyes.

Once my sight had adjusted to the light coming from the room, I was able to observe where I was. I was in a vast room that had countless fluorescent lights overhead, and countless machines scattered through out the entire space of it. There was a bed in the corner, and I frowned. I wasn't liking the looks of this at all. But before I could dwell on my disliking of the room any longer, my crate was dropped to the ground and opened with enough force I was surprised the door wasn't yanked off the hinges.

"Git' out of the cage." Someone demanded. I, however, simply set my jaw and remained seated. The guards clearly didn't find this amusing, and reached in to the cage to pull me out by the hair. I cringed and when I was out of the cage, I tensed preparing for anything. And while I had no qualms about trying to make a break for it, I figured at this moment, it would be better to wait and see what was going to happen. I glared at the man who still had my hair in his grasp for a moment before turning to see another man who was slightly older striding towards me.

"We're going to run some tests. Get onto that bad." He commanded, and from the look in his eyes, I could tell he thought that I wasn't intelligent enough to understand anything other than fragmented and simplistic sentences. Inwardly, I rolled my eyes at the thought, but decided to play dumb and stare him in the eyes and once again, not move. I watched as his eyes narrowed, and I saw him nod to the man holding my hair. But before the man could yank my head backwards, I slammed my elbow into his sternum while simultaneously mashing the palm of my other hand into the older man's face.

And just like that, my hair was released and the older man stepped back. I leaped to my feet and began to sprint towards the door. However, before I was even halfway there, one of the scientists who had been operating a machine tackled me in the knees and I went toppling downwards. I hit the floor with a bone-rattling crash, but didn't stop to comprehend the pain as I began flailing and kicking out at the man. I felt a twang of satisfaction as my heel impacted with his jaw and dislocated it. But the satisfaction was brief because apparently I had caught the attention of every other white coat in the room, and I was now being surrounded. I felt my eyes widen, but more importantly, I felt the survival instincts kick in.

Two of them stepped forwards and I leapt into the air, unfurling my wings as I did so. Gauging the size of the room, and the size of my wings, I knew I didn't have much room to maneuver around which was horrible planning on my part. But, due to the sheer size of my wings and the aforementioned lack of space, I would be able to create a lot of damage. And that was exactly what I planned to do. I shot my legs upwards and out of range from one of the white-coats hands before dropping them back down on his shoulder blade with a ferocious axe kick. He dropped like a brick and I darted back upwards to get closer to the ceiling. I glanced down and saw some of them calling for back-up and others pulling out those damn taser guns. I frowned and awkwardly shifted my wings to get into a better position for either fight or flight.

For the time being, I chose flight and with a powerful down stroke, I lunged straight towards one of the largest machines and barreled into it with a flying kick. The screen shattered and sparks flew everywhere. I almost smiled as I grabbed one of the levers that were jutting out from the now smoking machine and used it to swing myself straight into another machine. I ended up kicking a hole in it as my momentum caused the lever to break off. I flinched in surprise, but held onto the lever figuring it would be a helpful weapon.

The scientists were screaming now and I knew I had ticked them off just a bit. I was about to dive bomb one of them, however, when I felt the now familiar sensation of electricity coursing through my body. I almost gagged as my body went limp against will and I hurtled to the ground. I hit the cold tile hard, and almost instantly after that, I was grabbed roughly by the arms.

No. I refused to let this be it! I thought desperately. I struggled to think for a solution to end my lack of muscle function, but after several deep breaths, I decided to just fight through it, and with all the will power I could possibly summon, I managed to headbutt the scientist holding me and buck my legs out to kick the other in the groin. The one I head butted went down like a ton of bricks while the other doubled over and made a keening noise that reminded me of a screaming rabbit. But, I didn't stop to think about that as I charged straight into the pack of scientists who were blocking the door and my thoughts turned off. It was just sheer instinct.

Jump. Punch. Dodge. Sweep the legs. Elbow. Uppercut. Tear the eyes. I didn't know how many I managed to take down, before I was tased once more. Only, this time, I actually screamed in pain, and I realized whoever had tased me was now using the highest level of electricity. My knees buckled and I hit the tile flopping like a fish against all voluntary control. And then, the same person who had tased me sat me upwards and used an iron tight grasp around my shoulders to keep me still. I struggled to see him clearly due to the fact my gaze was swimming in and out of focus. But, when he spoke, I didn't need to see him to know that this was the man I had been taken too earlier and had claimed to know me.

"Daveigh, please calm down. This is unnecessary. Your hurting yourself more than we'd ever hurt you." He told me, sounding almost concerned. But, for some reason, even though I had no clue where I was, who this guy was, or what he was talking about, I knew that was a lie. Maybe it had been all the creatures I had seen while in my cage, maybe it was because of the fear in Iggy's face, or even the fact he had been accustomed to being in a cage, but the thing was, I knew this guy was lying through his teeth and all at once, my anger flared. And despite the powerful slap to the face it earned me, I don't regret spitting into his face.

"You're tough, Daveigh. And that's probably the only reason aside from luck that you managed to survive for as long as you did on your own. But your here now, and we'll see just how tough you really are." His voice was low and barely suppressing the rage I had no doubt he was experiencing. That, in addition to my stinging cheek made me realize the the gravity of this situation, and as much as I'd like to say it didn't scare me, that wasn't the case. I was terrified, and when I saw him pull out a needle from one of his coat pockets, I darted backwards. Or at least attempted to, but because my muscles weren't functioning correctly, he was able to tighten his grasp and restrain me and the next thing I knew, the needle had been jabbed into my upper arm. I felt my eyes widen before getting heavy, and before I knew it, my vision was blackening and it wasn't long before I completely lost consciousness.

-----

I stared at the doorbell for what I hoped wasn't too long. But, with Fang being as obnoxious as he was and hovering over my shoulder like a hawk (no pun intended), he noticed my staring and rang it for me before I could stop him. You see, neither of us are telepathic like Angel, so it's a good thing we had become terrific at reading each .others expressions because that way, we had no problem communicating messages such as "I hate your guts," without talking.

In reply to my heart-felt sentiment, he simply lifted up a corner of his mouth in one of his infamous Fang smirks. And despite my "save the world" complex, apparently his stupid smirk was my kryptonite. I felt my face heat and I staunchly returned my gaze to my mothers door. Less than a few seconds later, the door was opened and I saw Ella standing there. She grinned immediately when she saw me, but when she saw my arm, her expression changed quicker than a stop light.

"Oh my god, Max! What happened? And...where's the girl that was with you last time...Daveigh? And where's Iggy? What happened?!" She exclaimed in a rush, and the sheer amount of questions made my head spin, so the actual questions themselves were like repeated blows to the stomach.

"Oh, uh, well you know...the usual. Just some bird-kid adventures." I tried with a weak smile. She continued to gape at me before yelling "Mom! Max is here and she's hurt!" I cringed, and glanced around at the Flock, sending them all reassuring glances. I glanced at Fang the longest, seeing how tense his shoulders were and I gripped his fingers lightly in my own non-injured ones.

In a matter of seconds, my mom was running down the stairs and up to me. She scanned over my body, and stopped at my arm with a gasp. But then, being the amazing mom that she is, took in a deep breath and put on her veterinary demeanor and didn't ask questions.

"Oh Max, that looks pretty nasty. I can set that arm, and I think I have some plaster for a cast." She then hurried to her in home office and in another few seconds she was back with a large kit. She knelt in front of me and gingerly poked and prodded my arm. She would glance at my face every so often, and I could see her worry grow when I consistently failed to react.

"Max? Is your arm numb?"

"Yeah, I guess you could say that." I replied quietly.

"How long has it been broken?" I didn't reply right away, knowing that she wouldn't like the answer.

"Max...how long has it been broken." The tone of her voice made me look her in the eyes, and not for the first time, I was struck by how her eyes were the exact same color as mine.

"A couple of days." I muttered. She shook her head slightly and pulled out a splint from her kit.

"Max, you should have came straight to me. The arm's numb because it had been hurt for so long, your body decided to shut down the sensation in that arm." She explained.

"But...you can fix it right?" I said, opting not to mention why I didn't come straight here. "I mean, you said that I'd lose feeling in my arm if the chip was removed, and that didn't happen."

"I can, Max, but it will take a while." I tensed and looked around at the Flock who had now adopted the same panicked expression I'm sure I had on as well. My mom caught onto this change in attitude and looked around at all of us. Then, her face went into an even more alarmed expression (which I didn't think was possible until I saw her do it just then,) and I could practically see the gears turning in her head.

"Where's Iggy and Daveigh?" She asked in hardly more than a whisper.

"It's a long story, mom. But, the thing is, we don't have all that much time." I explained, hoping that she would continue to be the amazing mother she is and not ask any more questions.

"Your staying here at least until your arm is set and put in a cast. That being said, there's plenty of time for you to explain just what exactly has happened since you left." She frowned at me slightly, and I exhaled. So much for that not asking questions dream of mine. And, as much as I hated to admit it, she was right. I turned to Fang, using our finesse of looking-talking to convey that I wanted to get going and not explain the details. He shot me a look that said "Too bad."

This earned him another "I hate you" look. He didn't smirk this time, which only showed the seriousness of the situation. Finally, I rolled my eyes and threw my good hand upwards in defeat.

"All right, you win. Long story short, after we left, me and Daveigh fought, broke each others arms, and then didn't talk for about a day until she...um...left. The next day, Iggy was gone too. The reason why we didn't come here first was because we had gotten attacked after we left and we didn't want to lead any potential attacker to your house. But...now we're here because we need to find Iggy and in order to do that, Fang feels that my arm should be you know...not broken." I explained in one breath. Let me tell you, if I ever would have taken Speech class or whatever normal humans take, I would have aced it.

"Wait! Do you have any idea where Iggy might be? And why did Daveigh leave?" I had forgotten how much questions people tend to ask when someone goes missing.

"Well, we think that the White-coats have something to do with Iggy's disappearance." I replied teresly, watching her get the plaster ready.

"And Daveigh? Max, your not answering me about Daveigh." Her voice was growing progressively more tense. I pursed my lips and wondered how she would take it if I told her I was the cause for Daveigh's departure. There was a moment of complete silence before-

"Max, don't tell me you kicked Daveigh out." She said slowly, looking up at me, eyes wide.

"Then I won't. And technically I didn't. She wanted to leave." I replied bluntly. I didn't get what the big deal was, she wanted to leave. In my opinion, it wasn't much different than being in a cage. If you wanted out, it was only fair that you got out.

_"Max, you're being irrational." _ The Voice stated calmly. I almost jumped in surprise, but by now, I knew there were worse things than a voice in your head. Even if the voice was extremely irritating.

_"Funny, I thought having a voice inside my head was irrational." _I snapped back.

_ "Remember why you came here." _It replied, ignoring my latest bit of sarcasm.

"Mom, do you know where the School's newest location is?" I asked abruptly. By the look on her face, she had been saying something and I interrupted. But, when you have a voice in your head, you can't be held responsible for forgetting to pay attention every so often. Her brow furrowed and I watched her intently.

"No, I honestly don't. When you destroyed Itex, you should have destroyed every 'school'. Unless there's some other science organization that I don't know about, I can guarantee the School has nothing to do with this." She stated, shaking her head as though unable to grasp what was happening. That made two of us. I turned to face the rest of the Flock. Nudge looked discouraged, Gazzy looked devastated, Angel was resting her chin on top of Total's head and Fang looked skeptical.

"Okay, I'd like to believe that Itex was all we had to worry about. And I wished I'd have realized this sooner, but I'm pretty sure, no I know, that they weren't the only mad-scientists out there. Just because Itex was some uber-corporation, doesn't mean that there aren't smaller ones doing the same thing they did to us on other people." I saw that the plaster on the cast was done beginning to dry, so I began pacing around, not wanting to look at my Flock's expressions.

"But, Max, even if there is other scientists, what made you think they-"

"That they took Iggy? I don't know, let's see...they grafted avian DNA into him, they made him blind, and they've hunted him as well as the rest of us for as long as we've been on our own. If one of us goes missing, it's not just some little prank, it's always related back to some messed up, jerk-o, scientist!" I snapped. She flinched slightly and closed her eyes before she began to massage her temples. I instantly regretted snapping, and I fell quiet but didn't stop my pacing.

"Okay, Max. I believe you." She finally said, and I smiled slightly at the carpet. Geez, my mother is cool. "I'll do whatever it takes to help you find them." This time, I couldn't help it, and I let out a full fledged grin. Yeah, she's pretty much the coolest mom ever.

----


	15. Chapter 15

**AN: So...uh, another 2 months without updating. Yeah, I pretty much suck at not procrastinating. **

**Buuuuuut, on the plus side, this chapter is super long, with various POV's, and tons of action! So it kinda makes up for it...I hope? **

*****SPOILER ALERT FOR FANG*******

**So, I read FANG...like the day it came out, and let me tell you, I was surprised at the events that went down. (Those of you who read it know what I mean! -.-) But, I like Iggy and the rest of the Flock in the book, was really irritated by the sheer Faxness and how it made them kind of oblivious to the rest of the world. I mean it was already happening in MAX, and I didn't like it then either, so I'm kind of glad they are taking a break. (Because I don't want to call it anything else, because I do still like the pairing enough to miss the Faxness too.) So, throughout this fanfiction, I guess my dislike for their stupidity shows, but whatevs. **

*****SPOILERS DONE******

**I know for a fact that the plotline of this fanfic is not going to follow through with the plot of FANG, for very obvious reasons. So, for clarity's sake, this fanfic will take place forever after MAX. **

**But I also fell in love with this story again and got motivated so, who knows, maybe it will be less than 2 months between posts this time? :D**

**(I'm really sorry about that, folks! ^^;)**

**So anyways, enjoy!**

When I woke up, the first thing I heard was the humming and beeping of various machines. But the first thing I really noticed was the sheer amount of pain I was in. Every bone, muscle, and inch of skin hurt, and I tried to remember why. And then the whole fight came back into mind, and from there, I snapped my eyes open to see that I was in the very same room the fight had taken place. Only, I wasn't on the ground, I was on the bed and being restrained. And for the first time that I can ever recall, I truly and completely panicked. All common sense flew out the highly figurative window as I began to thrash and flail around, trying in vain to break free from the stupid restraints. The instant I started thrashing, the slow and even beeping I had heard before spiked and went erratic, and I dimly realized it must have been my heart monitor. When I finally finished my thrashing more because of physical exhaustion than anything else, the only thing I had succeeded in doing was earn myself multiple deep and painful cuts. I swore loudly and consistently, more at the fact I was restrained than the physical pain I was experiencing. But when I ran out of swear words to say, I sucked in several deep and shuddery breaths and forced myself to calm down just enough to get a hold of the situation at hand.

One, I was restrained. That much I had figured out before, but years of individual survival in the wilderness told me that sometimes the solution was often in the most basic forms.

Two, from my limited view of the room, I appeared to be alone in the room where I had broken at least two machines.

Three, I had no clue how long I had been out for.

All in all, I decided that this situation was pretty much the worst possible one I could have ever landed myself in. I felt like a trapped animal in more than one way, and I just wanted to get out of here, but I couldn't think of anyway to make that happen. All of my limbs were tightly restrained in more than one point, and there was also several restraints running across my stomach, chest, and one across my forehead. Apparently, they didn't trust me, which meant if they ever came back in here, it'd be all that much harder to escape. I cursed once again and managed to clench my fists. I stared up at the fluorescent lights miserably for a moment before realizing...

Iggy!

What had they done with Iggy? Had they taken him and experimented on him too? Had he put up a fight? Was he okay? I squeezed my eyes shut and let out yet another line of obscene words, and if my head wasn't restrained, I would have banged my head against the table. This whole situation was my fault! Maybe if I had just stayed with the Flock instead of taking Max's bait-

"That's quite an expansive vocabulary you have there." A woman's voice said. It was soft, but it made me jump none the less. I cursed yet again as the restraints dug into my skin even more due to the involuntary action. I wanted to try to turn to the direction the voice had came from, but common sense prevented me from doing so. Instead I shut my mouth and just listened. I heard footsteps coming towards me from somewhere behind my head, and I frowned at the lights as I listened to her come to a stop directly above me. I saw her face as it obscured my view of the ceiling and I noticed that she wasn't ugly or witch-like at all, in fact, it looked like she was in her late 30's and aside from the white coat she was wearing, she looked almost motherly. I wanted to demand to know who she was, but ultimately, I decided to remain quiet and see what I could get out of her by letting her do the talking.

"You're fight yesterday was pretty impressive." She continued on casually as she strolled over to a counter top and grabbed a clip board. "Though, with all the sedatives they gave you, I'm surprised your even awake." She stared at the clipboard neutrally for a moment before reaching out to grab the handle of the nearest drawer. If I had been glad that the counter was in the periphery of my vision before, I changed my mind when I saw her pull out a needle and some electrodes from a drawer.

"Tell me, Daveigh, what do you remember of your life before the age of seven?"

I didn't tell her anything. But, to my dismay, she interpreted the answer (or lack thereof) correctly.

"Nothing? Well, that's a shame. We'll just have to do some tests until you remember, then." I felt my eyes narrow as she walked towards me and against my will, began clipping the electrodes to my skin. I didn't bother squirming, knowing that it would just weaken me further and if I wanted to try to get out of here, I'd need all the energy I could get. My mind began to race as I tried to think of something, _anything_ I could do to get me out of here. But once I ruled out brute force which had failed me less than 5 minutes ago, there were virtually no options. I considered trying to extend my wings from underneath me, but there was no rational reason to. Plus, if I did so, my wings just might end up restrained and that would be another problem I didn't want to add to my growing list of problems. I felt my frown deepen at the severe lack of options.

But then, suddenly, the woman was standing above me with a large and lethal looking needle, and all the worry I had about getting out of here was instantly overshadowed by a wave of fresh panic. In the seven years that I remembered existing, I had not once seen a needle in person. Ever. That alone might have added to the fear, but based on what I had seen done with needles and the Flock's experiences with them, it didn't particularly take me long to determine that a needle of that size in a place like this was not good news.

"Now, you might feel just a tiny sting-" The woman stated calmly. If it hadn't been for an eerily deranged smile on her face, I might have loosened up a bit, but that wasn't the case and I felt every muscle in my body tense. I stared up at her in horror, and once she began to inch the needle towards my arm, all intentions of conserving my energy evaporated and I began kicking, bucking, and flailing for all I was worth. I felt the table rock underneath me, and the movement encouraged me to writhe with even more fervor. The woman let out a surprised sort of yelp before lunging forward to press my shoulder and torso downwards. Unfortunately for her, she had placed her left arm slightly too close to my head, and I just barely managed to crane my head against the restraints enough for my teeth to graze her skin. But once they impacted, I bit down, and I bit down hard.

She yelped even louder this time and instantly tried to yank her arm backwards, but I clenched my jaw tighter and it wasn't long until I tasted the bitter taste of blood. Finally, she managed to withdraw her arm, but not before getting a hefty sized chunk ripped off. I spat in disqust and kept flailing until the next thing I knew the table had flipped over sideways and I crashed to the ground. Being that I was still very much restrained, it wasn't a pleasant landing and I was momentarily stunned. But, the woman took advantage of my temporary stillness and stuck the needle forcefully into my upper arm. My eyes widened and I gasped partially in surprise and partially in pain.

I tried to struggle and put up a general fight, which may have been my wilderness instincts kicking in once more, but shortly after I began to squirm, my movements became slow and heavy as though I was trying to move through a tub of syrup. Alarm bells went off in my mind, and I might have demanded to know what the hell they had just done to me if the same man who had sedated me earlier hadn't entered the room and stood in front of me.

"And here I thought that these restraints would effectively prevent you from resistance. Clearly, I was wrong." I wasn't sure what emotion was in his voice, but none the less, I knew I had messed up. "I guess we'll just have to use even more next time." He continued. I wanted to shout something defiant like "There won't be a next time, you psychopath!" but I just couldn't bring myself to say anything, because for some strange reason, I couldn't talk. The actual action of transferring my thoughts to my vocal chords just wasn't functioning correctly. I wasn't sure if the lack of speech was due to fear of due to whatever they had just injected in me, and I didn't want to recognize either of those possibilities.

"This subject is particularly difficult and more than likely has multiple design flaws," The woman pointed out. "Why wasn't she just killed when she arrived here?" The man actually laughed at this and I got the feeling that even if I wasn't tied up or losing muscle control due to the contents of the needle, I still wouldn't have understood just what was so funny.

"We have a lot to learn about this subject. Now, Dr. Zinade, go clean that wound and be back in about 5 minutes. By that point, the subject will be ready for the physical endurance testing we had planned."

"Yes sir," Dr. Zinade replied obediently. I blinked multiple times, and even that small action was long and drawn out. The effects were particularly irritating because while my muscles failed me, my mind was still way more coherent than I would have liked and I was aware of everything being said. And I got the feeling that I really wasn't going to like this 'physical endurance' experiment one bit.

"It's blind." One of the whitecoats stated bluntly to a colleague.

"Really? I wasn't aware of that! When did that happen?" I snarked. For scientists who were supposed to be smart, intellectually superior, yada yada yada, they were pretty much the biggest idiots ever. I heard one of them click their tongues in impatience and I felt oh so gratified that I could get under their skin.

"As far as I'm concerned, it's a failed experiment. Useless, really. What does he expect us to do with it?" The one who clicked his tongue asked. I forced myself not to cringe at their words, and instead did what the Flock did best. I put on a tough face and give the scientists heck.

"You could throw me a party. Y'know, to honor my complete failure that you and your scientists pals so graciously bestowed on me.' I leaned back against the bars of my cage casually, and I could tell that these people were getting progressively more irritated. One of them made a groaning noise that may have been an intimidating snarl (and based on my vast experience with things that snarl, I found it a highly plausible occurance.) The next thing I heard was a slight rustling, and instinctively I tensed knowing that one of them was gong to kick/throw/hit the cage.

"Don't! Just leave it. The boss can deal with it, if he feels like it." The impact I had been expecting was never delivered and I heard the man's foot lightly touch the ground again.

"Yeah, I guess your right. But he's so busy I think it might just die before he gets around to it." They both chuckled, and I shivered against my will. Morbid nutjubs, every last one of them. I then heard them walk away and when I was sure they were gone, I shifted so that my head was resting on my knees and tried to come up with a plan. But, I was drawing a blank. Despite what I had told Daveigh earlier about me always having explosives, I had used up the last of them in our encounter with the dragon-fly things. And being that I was locked in a cage, I didn't exactly have the best access to anything flammable or explosive. And I had already tried to get out of this cage, but since the scientists just love to out-do themselves, they had redesigned the cages so that the bars were closer together. They were so close, in fact, that I couldn't fit more than my pinky and ring finger out of a hole. It was stupid, phobia-inducing, and loathe as I was to admit it, effective (on the wackjob scientists part at least.)

I didn't regret coming after Daveigh one bit, because if I didn't, nobody would have. Not with Max and her Nazi-like dictatorship at least. I rolled my eyes just at the thought of her and for about the billionth time today, I wondered where Daveigh was. What were they doing to her? Was she okay? It just didn't seem fair that because of freak circumstances, she met us and ultimately, got dragged into a lab. I shook my head and thrust a hand through my hair. Everything about this situation sucked. Big time.

I stared at the addresses and maps my mother had given us and tried to use my best not-so educated guessing abilities on which one seemed the likely a mad-scientist area would be located. You see, my mom had been able to give us names and addresses of some of the scientists who scattered after Itex was destroyed (by little old me, of course)

"What do you think?" Fang asked me, as he glided over to my right.

"I think that out of all of these locations, this Dolohov Wilhelm dude looks the most suspicious since his address is in the middle-of-nowhere desert-ville, kind of like the school used to be." I tried, it seemed logical, but in all honesty, the fact I knew nothing about any of these people meant that any one of them could have been equally loony and each have their own lab.

_"I don't think he's the right one, Max."_ I heard Angel's voice in my mind. I shot her a look that said "Elaborate" She frowned slightly as though listening to something, and I watched her intently as I waited for her to continue on with the conversation. _"I keep on hearing things."_

_ "What kind of things?"_ I asked, unsure if this would be good or bad. And with Angel the words "I keep hearing things" will more likely than not, be bad.

_"It's hard to explain....I guess, it's like a radio. Like, when your far away, the reception isn't that good and everything comes in and out and you can only kind of understand what's being said. Well, I keep hearing bits of conversations that keep mentioning parts of words that sound like 'subject', 'experiment', and 'tests'. So, I think that we're getting closer to the place where they're probably doing experiments and stuff."_ I had to force my self to keep my jaw closed. She had elaborated all right. I mean, hearing those words could have been something as innocent as a high school chemistry class. And then again, it could have been something like messed up lunatics experimenting on poor innocent people. And in my funny little world, it seemed about a billion times more likely for it to be the second one.

_"Okay, Angel, lead the way."_

They managed to move the bed I was still forcibly restrained to, to a wide open area that might have been a court yard if it hadn't been underground. But, despite the fact it was underground, it was still fenced off so that about 5 feet of floor stood on the opposite side of the fence. It was the size of at least three football fields and was lit by the same fluorescent lights that had been in the other room. The walls were dark and despite the size, it felt strangely claustrophobic. I tried to take in every last detail, but suddenly Dr. Zinade came up to me and effortlessly released the restraints. I tried to lash out at her immediately, but my movements failed me and instead, I crashed to he floor in a heap. I heard her footsteps leave the room followed by a slight _sssshk_ noise, signifying that the door had slid shut behind her. I sucked in a deep breath and willed my muscles to cooperate. For a few seconds, I just sort of twitched pathetically, but after that, I miraculously got my arms to slowly lift myself off the ground.

My legs presented the same challenge and when they began to shake, I nearly fell face first back into the dirt. But, I managed to catch myself and begin to lever myself upwards into a standing position. My muscles were screaming at me, as though those two actions had strained every last muscle fiber, and not for the first time, I wanted to know exactly what had been injected into my system. I scowled and forced my neck to move, which felt like I was pushing against a brick wall, and finally was able to look up to see multiple cameras littering the ceiling.

"What 'm I doin' here?" I croaked, hoping that they would be able to hear me as well as see me.

"This is a physical endurance and survival experiment. Begin." The voice of Dr. Zinade resonated throughout the room. Instantly, I felt my stomach drop and the adrenaline start pumping. I strained my ears to hear any sound that might indicate what she was talking about, and it wasn't long before I did hear something. There was a slight shifting, and it was only the adrenaline that allowed my body to react quick enough to dodge what would have hit me. I blinked and turned to see a humanesque creature that had a tail and claws, like that of a tiger. Her eyes were almost eerily green and also slitted making her appear very not human, and instantly I knew two things. One, that she was made in a lab. Two, that in my current state, she could very easily kill me. Now I understood the "Physical endurance and Survival" bit.

I tensed the instant I saw her legs tense, and again, I just barely missed being tackled to the ground. I heard the air rush by my ear as she swiped her claws past my head, and I silently urged my muscles to work, because I knew dodging wouldn't be enough to keep me alive for more than a few more seconds. I forced my legs to carry me a few steps sideways, and it was like moving through sludge. And apparently, I wasn't the only one who noticed this. The tiger-girl sensed the movement and the next thing I knew I had been tackled to the ground. She was lighter than I thought, but as she smiled a very toothy grin at me, I knew that regardless of her weight she would be one heck of a challenge to get off.

What I did next was sheer instinct and adrenaline, and looking back at it later, I had no clue how my body had actually accomplished it. I swung my legs upwards and delivered a powerful kick straight to her gut. The wind left her with a loud woosh, and before she could regain her bearings, I strained the muscles in my legs to send her flying off of me. I rolled over and scrambled to my feet, hoping that the action had gone a lot faster than I thought it had. But when I stood up and saw she was only just beginning to get up, I silently cheered. I scanned around the room and tried to gauge how high the ceiling was, but when the tiger chick got to her feet, I decided to forget the gauging and just get up there, because I knew that against her, I would be much safer in the air. I shot out my wings as fast as I could (which, ultimately might not have been that fast) and forced myself forwards in a run. I did a down stroke but when I tried to lift my wings upwards, my messed up muscles failed me and I toppled to the ground.

I attempted to tuck and roll to break my fall, but was literally knocked sideways before I could hit the ground. Disoriented, I didn't see her paw coming until it was too late and my right shoulder got sliced. I swallowed back a scream and shot up my hands to grab her claws. What with her having cat-like reflexes and all, she almost got away, but due to the close proximity, I had the upper hand and I used all my will power to judo flip her and then slam her to the ground. She was up on her feet again almost instantly and I decided to run in the opposite direction, which was no easy feat.

She was bounding after me on all fours in a heart beat and I tried my hardest to outrun her. But being that I was drugged, and she was a hybrid made for running, she caught up to me easily. But rather than be tackled this time, I was able to turn around at the last instant, duck low and punch her in the face as she she struggled to come to a halt. She spit once and I noticed there was some blood in it, but all the punch seemed to do was anger her. I fought against my muscles as I inched backwards to create distance between us. Her eyes narrowed even more as they followed me attentively and almost hungrily. Dimly, I realized she must be more cat than human to be so focused on her 'prey'. I also realized that I couldn't run, the moment I did, she'd be there and she'd be faster. And I, would be doomed. I needed to get up into the air, and I couldn't fail.

I kept my eyes locked directly on hers, not wanting to break her focus. As I did so, I slowly tensed every muscle in my body, particularly my legs and wings as I prepared for one hell of a jump. I was just lucky I hadn't had the time to tuck my wings back in after my last attempt at flying. I could see her shifting ever so slightly, see her energy growing restless as she prepared to pounce. I concentrated so hard on her movements, that the instant she pounced, I had already kicked off from the ground. I pushed my wings downwards so hard that in a different circumstance (one that didn't involve a large amount of anonymous drugs), I would have easily been able to get myself 50 feet upwards. But as it was, it was not one of those circumstances, and I barely hit 10 feet. I then wrenched my wings upwards to prepare for another powerful down stroke. But before I could elevate more than 3 feet higher, I felt my left ankle get grabbed. My eyes widened as I glanced down to see the tiger lady clinging to my ankle, getting ready to bite it, in fact. And those teeth were definitely not human! Another wave of fresh terror ran through me and without thinking, I kicked my leg hard so that her grip loosened just enough for my toes to slam into her nose with enough force for it to shatter. It was the impact, rather than the jerky movement, that made her fall, and she hit the ground hard.

And I had to keep my wings moving or I'd be next, I realized as I dropped to about half the distance I had previously been at. I used my shoulders even more than I normally would have and angled the tips of my wings in a way that enabled me to catch the air better, and after two agonizingly slow strokes, I was finally greater than 30 feet in the air. I glanced down and saw that she still hadn't gotten up, but she was starting to stir. I forcefully kept my wings moving as I scanned the room for something, _anything_ that could help me get this fight over with. At last, I spotted the nearest camera perched from a spot at the very top of the ceiling, which was surprisingly still another 10 feet above me. I had an idea, and without wasting a moments hesitation, I flapped twice more until I reached it. I shot out a fist and easily broke it's probably thousand-dollar lens. I grabbed the largest shard before it fell, and instantly dived down. Tiger woman was just crawling to her feet and looking up at me as though trying to grasp what was happening. In her moment of weakness, however, I was able to use the momentum of my fall to crash directly into her torso and tackle her to the ground.

My wings were a flurry around us as we rolled around on the floor until I finally had her pinned. I felt the warmth of her breath against my face as it all rushed from her lungs, but without looking at her face, without even thinking, I plunged the shard into her abdomen. Despite the fact she was still having trouble breathing, she managed to suck in a huge gasp of surprise. I flung myself backwards with as much coordination I could muster, which inevitably, wasn't that much and I toppled backwards. I saw the blood on my hands, and the blood seeping from her abdomen, and I wasn't particularly perturbed. After all, I had killed countless animals living in the wild. But, I made the terrible mistake of looking at her face, and I saw fear. No, not fear. Terror. Sheer terror that was almost childlike. It illuminated her features in all the worst ways, and I was able to see the human she was beneath all the DNA splicing. I squeezed my eyes shut until it was almost painful, until suddenly, images flashed through my mind.

_There was a girls face. She had a strong jaw and delicate features, with brilliant and unique green eyes. She was maybe 8 or 9 years old. She was smaller for her age. The image faded away to show the same girl standing next to someone with long curly tresses, both of them laughing mirthfully._

And then, as suddenly as the flash had came, it vanished. But the emotions it carried certainly did not. I shot my eyes open, to see that I was staring directly into the same green eyes I had just seen in the image. The tiger woman was staring directly into my eyes, not unlike she had been doing a few minutes prior, only this time, there wasn't the intent to kill. Instead, there was only a sad sort of recognition. I sucked in huge breaths of air, feeling as though I had just been punched in the gut, and staggered backwards. What was going on? My non-casted hand shot upwards towards my mouth. But when I saw the blood, I stared in horror at the crimson covered hand and then back to the girl as the look of recognition slowly shifted into a small, ghost of a smile. A smile that was again exactly the same as the image I had just seen. And with that, I saw her chest stop rising and falling.

My heart was hammering in my chest, and I could hear the rush of blood surging through my ears. I felt my knees give way and I collapsed to the ground, unable to tear my eyes away from this sad, recombinant being. Why had the image been so similar to me? Who was she? What was going on? Why had I seen that flash? The thoughts were racing through my mind even faster than my heart was beating, which I wouldn't have thought possible.

"Well done! Excellent performance! You've passed the Survival and Endurance portion." Dr. Zinade said enthusiastically over the loudspeaker. Her tone might have made me angry, furious even, at some other point, but I was too distracted to let it register. It was only when a man's voice spoke through the loudspeaker. It was the same man who had acted as though he had known me before I was restrained. The very same one who had sedated me.

"Daveigh, according to the monitors we have attached to you, it seems the activity in your frontal lobe flared recently. Tell me, do you remember anything about this girl?" This statement finally got me to remove my eyes from the tiger-girls motionless body, and I stared bleakly in the direction of the loudspeaker. I set my jaw and didn't say anything. Partly because I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of replying, and partly because I wanted to say no I didn't remember her, but got the feeling that it wouldn't particularly work. Because even though I had no clue who this girl was, the sheer emotions of those two brief images made me doubt that we were strangers to each other. There was a pause as he waited to see if I would respond, and when he determined I wouldn't, he spoke up again. And the next words he spoke were absolutely bone-chilling.

"Because you did know her, Daveigh. She helped you escape from here over 7 years ago. She was one of the people you didn't save."


End file.
